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and counter-espionage branch fully into the Directorate of Military Operations organisation (as ‘M.O.5(g)’), and these developments underpinned successive attempts by the military to take over Cumming’s organisation entirely.5 In the meantime, however, a version of the pre-war arrangement temporarily continued whereby an interdepartmental committee meeting every six months oversaw Cumming’s work. The last peacetime meeting had been in May 1914; the next was in January 1915. Perhaps indicating Cumming’s perceived lowly status, Colonel Cockerill only told him about the meeting just before it occurred. It was held in the Foreign Office, which was represented by the Permanent Under-Secretary, Sir Arthur Nicolson. Callwell, Cockerill and two other officers were there for the army, while Sir Graham Greene (Permanent Under-Secretary) and Blinker Hall attended for the Admiralty. ‘Finance was discussed,’ wrote Cumming in his diary, ‘& I am to limit myself to 5000 a month, with 1000 in addition as margin.’

Although the location and constitution of the January meeting suggests that the Foreign Office retained overall control, Cumming’s day-to-day direction was in the hands of Admiralty and War Office personnel, who themselves did not necessarily follow a common line. The day after the Foreign Office meeting, Cumming had ‘a long yarn’ with Hall at the Admiralty about the position of an officer in Petrograd (as St Petersburg was renamed for patriotic reasons in 1914) over whom the army and the navy evidently disagreed. Hall ‘will back me up if necessary’, noted Cumming, ‘but I dont wish to start friction between Army & Navy & so asked him to do nothing until I came to him for help’. Cockerill’s deputy, Major C. N. French, who from early 1915 was the principal point of contact between Cumming and the War Office (and remained so for the rest of the war), increasingly seems to have conceived his role as one of command, rather than mere liaison. In March, when there was a difference of opinion over the control of agents in Norway, Hall bluntly assured Cumming that he was ‘not in any sense under CF’s orders’. Another complication was that, since the outbreak of war, service attachés across Europe had begun to take a more active part in secret intelligence work. Cumming’s growing deployment of officers and agents in neutral countries such as the Netherlands and in Scandinavia, moreover, ensured that the Foreign Office took a close interest in his work. At the end of January Ronald Campbell informed Cumming not only that the Admiralty was ‘against further extension in Sweden & Denmark at present’, but that ‘the Norway & Sweden organisations’ should be under him (Cumming) rather than Captain Consett, the British naval attaché based in Stockholm. In April 1915, with the increasing volume of General Staff work, the Directorate of Military Operations was reorganised. Colonel Cockerill was promoted brigadier-general and given the title Director of Special Intelligence with overall responsibility for counter-espionage, economic warfare and propaganda, as well as postal, cable and press censorship. Along with the ‘Collation of War Intelligence’, and the ‘investigation of enemy ciphers’, ‘Liaison with Espionage Service’ was given to a new branch, ‘M.O.6’, under the newly promoted Colonel French.6

Scattered through Cumming’s 1915 diary are indications of interdepartmental tensions over intelligence matters, though the Foreign Office remained supportive. On 18 June Cumming had an hour’s talk with Sir Arthur Nicolson: ‘He was very kind & said I might come to him whenever I was in difficulty.’ In August Blinker Hall of Naval Intelligence suggested that Cumming should be ‘independent of Admty & WO’. Ronald Campbell in the Foreign Office did ‘not entirely concur’ but ‘would like to see me more independent’. The following month, faced with GHQ attempting to expand their intelligence operations, Nicolson proposed ‘limiting G.H.Q.’s zones & handing K[ell] & me our £ [money] direct’. Colonel French agreed to the financial arrangement, but did ‘not like limitation