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only a few minutes in which to handle the thing, make such measurements as I could, and make a thumbnail sketch. I did my best, but was surprised afterwards to find how much I had managed to leave out.’ All he could ascertain was that it had sights ‘marked from 100 to 700 M and from 800 to 1900 on the raised part’ and that it ‘fired 5 shots’. It all seems to have been in vain. Back in London, both the weapons expert and Macdonogh concluded that the device was of no special interest, and Cumming even offered to pay back the £25 he had given to JR. Macdonogh reasonably ‘said that it was not fair to make me responsible for all the failures - a certain proportion of which must occur - and that not many offices could afford to make good such losses’. Cumming, who was still at this stage meeting the rent for his combined flat and office out of his own pocket, mused ‘that no officer who had not private means could take my work at all, as I reckoned it cost me the whole of my pay to keep it going’.

On 9 May 1910 Cumming’s report was considered at a meeting of himself, Kell, Bethell, Ewart and Macdonogh. The division of the work into two quite separate offices was confirmed and the private detective Drew’s services dispensed with. On Macdonogh’s suggestion it was agreed that the budget (now £6,200) would in future be divided equally between Cumming and Kell. Two days later these proposals were broadly approved by Sir Charles Hardinge. When Macdonogh declared that the money allowed for the Bureau’s work was ‘not nearly enough for the purpose’, Hardinge said ‘that if the work required it, the amount must be increased’. Cumming was allowed to lay off some non-producing agents, reduce B’s retainer and pay him by results in future. Hardinge further agreed to cover the cost of Cumming’s separate office and increase the budget for his necessary travelling expenses, once again assuring him (and Kell) that ‘there was no wish to restrict the work in any way, and if the money already granted was not sufficient, more would have to be found from elsewhere. All he wanted was to make sure that it was spent wisely.’

The work of the Bureau

The typescript version of Mansfield Cumming’s diary, the most important single source for the early days of the Secret Service Bureau, is tantalisingly incomplete from the end of August 1910 until the beginning of 1914. There are no entries from 1 September to 21 November 1910. Only 6-18 January survives for 1911, and 1912 contains only a few days in January, March and December. For 1913 we have 1 January to 27 May; 26-27 June; 31 July and 10-31 December. From 1 January 1914 the original, handwritten desk diaries are available, though even these have frustrating gaps when Cumming, without any particular explanation, simply seems to have stopped writing it up. We know, for example, from Vernon Kell’s diary (itself a pretty sketchy document which covers only June 1910 to July 1911) that there were meetings to review the first year’s work of the Bureau in November 1910, and that Kell and Cumming both submitted formal reports, but neither appears to have survived.11 The growth and development of the Secret Service, however, can be followed in outline from the scanty minutes of five meetings of the committee which supervised the Bureau’s work, which met at six-monthly intervals from November 1910 to May 1913, chaired by Sir Arthur Nicolson, who succeeded Hardinge as Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office in November 1910.

Recognising that the Bureau’s work was growing rapidly, the first of these meetings (on 16 November) agreed the appointment of full-time assistants for both Cumming and Kell. Backed by the War Office, Cumming also asked for funds to base an ‘officer-agent’ (Macdonogh’s term) at Copenhagen who would develop a network of sources in Germany, primarily to report on ‘German naval construction and armaments’, and, if war became a possibility, provide information on ‘German naval mobilization & concentration, & the assembly of transports in German harbours & also regarding the movement of troops,