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to go by, if it is desired to repeat a disguise exactly - as in my case’. Cumming also developed other techniques to avoid being identified. In January 1913, meeting a contact called ‘Ruffian’ - ‘a plausible chap, but rather oily looking’ who claimed his brother-in-law worked as a foreman in a German gun factory - Cumming arrived by taxi, using a method which he claimed was ‘the best I have tried, as it is almost impossible for the man - if a rascal - to point you out to his friends, who may be waiting with a camera &c.’. The trick was to ‘drive past the rendezvous on the opposite side’ and when the target was spotted, ‘drive up close to him, open the door and invite him in. I lean back the moment I have caught his eye, and from then onwards do not show myself at all.’ After the conversation was finished the contact was deposited ‘at some point well away from the place of meeting . . . Of course,’ added Cumming, ‘this plan is too expensive for a prolonged meeting, but for a short one it is very good.’

Cumming brought his enthusiasm for the latest technology to bear on some of the intelligence challenges he had to face. Although wireless communications technology was in its infancy, he thought it offered a possible solution to the problem of getting rapid messages through during the period of political tension which it was assumed would precede any German invasion. In the spring of 1912 he discussed with French intelligence colleagues the development of a ‘mobile wireless station’ in a motor car, with a range of 250 miles, which would be based in Belgium. Although the French thought the Belgian authorities would not allow such a thing, they offered to see if ‘the Car &c’ could be purchased ‘thro’ a Belgian Agent (a Govt. official whom they knew of)’, but Cumming had his doubts about ‘the soundness of the idea’. Contemplating a scheme in January 1913 for a father-and-son team to gather information along the Danish and Norwegian coast using a thirty-ton motor pilot boat, Cumming reflected that ‘the knotty point about the transmission of news remains unsolved’. Late in 1913 Cumming was working on a scheme to base an aeroplane in France, which could be used to keep watch along the country’s eastern border, but Macdonogh baulked at the prospective cost - Cumming thought £1,700, the air experts £3,000 or more - and Wilson said it could be done only in co-operation with the French, which he promised to help with.

The approach of war

General Wilson as Director of Military Operations was a particularly active promoter of close Anglo-French relations, and his championing of the alliance with France was part of a wider and growing closeness between the two countries which was reflected in the intelligence world. In January 1910 Wilson’s predecessor, John Spencer Ewart, had told Cumming that he ‘did not wish any espionnage [sic] work done in France just now, as our present excellent relations might be disturbed thereby’. Cumming’s earliest liaison contacts with a foreign intelligence service came in March 1912 when he met officers of French Military Intelligence to discuss matters of common interest, inevitably concentrating on gathering information about German capabilities and intentions. The most senior French officer involved, Colonel Charles-Édouard Dupont (head of the Deuxième Bureau of the French General Staff from 1913 to 1918), ‘was quite disposed to be frank and friendly and so were the other officers we met subsequently’, but it was evident that they were ‘a little nervous about telling to strangers of another nation the matters they have kept secret for so long’. Dupont, however, was ‘very strong indeed as to the vital necessity of our meeting each other and deciding now at once upon a plan of concerted action to be taken when the crisis came’.

By 1913 the French and British were exchanging intelligence material and Macdonogh was directing requests to the French for specific information through Cumming. In January, for example, he asked about the composition of German armies on their western frontier and ‘a new powder