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(including one of Godfrey’s deputies). Regarding actual intelligence, however, the Admiralty were still ‘in rather a poor way’, with Godfrey’s requirements of November still being ill provided. There was some progress in Denmark where ‘an organisation was being built up under difficulties’, and in Norway ‘the position of ground intelligence was rather better’, but the only area where SIS had been able to provide ‘good help’ was information about ships in neutral ports. Godfrey followed up his interview with a letter to Hankey and a note on ‘sources of information’. Clearly well disposed towards SIS in general, Godfrey made allowances for its deficiencies. ‘I should like to say’, he wrote, ‘that many criticisms in the past have been due to causes beyond the control of the S.I.S., who, if they had had the money, could have provided us with a splendid organisation in existence when the war broke out and capable of rapid expansion.’14

In the accompanying paper Godfrey thought about the future: ‘I do not know what can be achieved in Germany. Their contra-espionage organisation is extremely good, but abroad there may be a chance of catching up, if we are prepared to spend in neutral countries the same knowledge and money as the Gestapo [sic] are credited with doing now.’ Godfrey thought that an organisation could be established in South America and the Middle East ‘that will bear fruit in the near future and compete on equal terms with the Gestapo. We may’, he added, ‘have to use their own methods, but I am convinced that in this, as in other realms, we can beat the Germans at their own game and improvise where they rely on years of preparation.’ For all the current difficulties, Godfrey remained optimistic. Naval liaison with SIS was ‘good’ and ‘development is being pursued with vigour, and although nothing can make up for lack of money in peace-time, I am still hopeful that, given reasonable luck, improvements may be achieved during the forthcoming year’.15 Godfrey’s observations to Hankey (which he niftily copied to Menzies) must have been welcome indeed to SIS, but, in truth, there was not yet much of substance to rely on: improvisation, ‘reasonable luck’ and catching up with the Germans. These were scarcely guaranteed to bring victory, even if they fell securely within the fine old British tradition of muddling through.

The army view was similar. The recently appointed Director of Military Intelligence, General ‘Paddy’ Beaumont-Nesbitt, told Hankey that ‘relations between his Department and the Secret Intelligence Service were, generally speaking, admirable and that, so far as he was concerned, the S.I.S. gave fairly good results’. ‘Little information’, however, was being supplied about Germany ‘and the position was not as good as it ought to be in Eastern Germany and Poland’. While ‘political information of a general character was good’, on the technical side ‘this was not the case’. The War Office wanted ‘to check up on figures for stores, munitions and implements of war’, but, while ‘there were plenty of rumours’, what ‘they really wanted was photostat copies of documents or other positive proof ’. Beaumont-Nesbitt confirmed that the army did not want ‘interpretation’. In his view ‘the S.I.S. should not “interpret” information at all: it should confine itself to producing facts’.

Of the three service departments the air force was by far the least happy. The Director of Air Intelligence, Air Commodore Kenneth Buss, bluntly told Hankey that he was ‘generally dissatisfied’ with the intelligence received. 16 This was especially so from within Germany itself. Perhaps remembering Frederick Winterbotham’s agent 479 driving round Germany trying to spot Luftwaffe airfields, he ‘could not understand why there was such a general lack of “ground” information and thought [though he cannot have thought very hard about this] that even under war conditions it would have been comparatively simple to get people to go within sight of an aerodrome and report what aeroplanes were there’. He reported that most of the questionnaires submitted