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of areas’. During the late autumn the issue of War Office control came to a head when, on an attempt by the army to take over his Dutch network, Cumming finally lost patience with the persistent incursions of other departments on his organisation. ‘Ever since the war started,’ he wrote to Nicolson in a long and evidently heartfelt letter, ‘my Bureau has been subjected to attacks which have disorganised and almost destroyed it and which have entirely prevented me from devoting my whole energies to the difficult work I have to do.’ He asserted that, on the outbreak of war, ‘nearly the whole of my existing agents were taken away from their stations and I was left without a staff and with my systems completely dislocated’. Since then his people ‘have been attacked by our own authorities in Belgium, Holland, Denmark & Russia’. The War Office had taken over his ‘admirable organisation’ in Holland, where his work had been ‘completely ruined by the interference of other and rival organisations - controlled by officers who have no experience of Secret Service work and who are apparently not influenced by any consideration for the views of the Foreign Office or the need for tact and diplomacy in so delicate a situation’.

For Cumming, the main threat to his position, and indeed to the whole existence of his Service, came from the army. ‘I am of course an outsider in the War Office,’ he told Nicolson, ‘and since the war I have been put under a sub-section of a Department, with a position so subordinate that I am unable to raise my voice in protest against this or any other action affecting my work . . . I remain’, he continued, ‘outside the pale of the circle in which my duties lie.’ It was ‘apparently only necessary for an officer (junior to myself) to express a wish, and large portions of my work are taken away from me and given to others’. He argued that when he had first been appointed, his ‘duties and limitations were clearly laid down and defined’, but no attention was now paid to them. He believed that his Bureau was ‘being gradually “side tracked” out of its appointed sphere’, and that he would ‘presently find’ that he had ‘nothing left to do but to deal with the degraded individuals who sell their services at such times, while all my work, training and experience of years will go to others who step in to seize the structure built up with so much care’. Cumming asserted that ‘if these changes resulted in better work being done or a better organisation being secured’ he would ‘not have a word to say’ and ‘would cheerfully retire from a task that had obviously proved too much for my capacity’. Naturally he did not believe that was the case. In particular, to maintain the secrecy which he regarded as so vital for his work, he asked that he might be ‘dissociated from personal connection with the Admiralty or War Office and may be allowed to run my own service independently’. As an important initial step he wanted funds to be paid to him direct and that he should have discretion to pay them out as he wished, under a general authority from the service ministries. He said that there were ‘items which it is undesirable should be known to anyone besides those who authorise them’ and reasonably argued that it was impossible to keep them ‘secret if the accounts pass through both departments’. Besides, if money was paid directly to Cumming, ‘my agents would remain unknown and would be able to work safely and secretly and without interference from out side’.

We do not know if Cumming actually sent this long and powerful letter to Sir Arthur Nicolson, as the original top copy has not been found in either the SIS or Foreign Office archives. All that survives is a partial draft annotated in Cumming’s handwriting, along with an undated typescript carbon copy of the entire text. Cumming appears to have shown the letter to the Director of Military Operations, General Callwell, for he wrote in his diary on 2 November: ‘Saw Genl. C. re my letter to Sir A. which he wished me not to send.’ Over the next week Cumming noted that Callwell had ‘written