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make sure that he could assure Sir D. Haig [the Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force] that he had absolute control over the Military part of the S.S. Bureau’. Macdonogh, therefore, ‘proposed to do away with divisions Geographical, & substitute Subject divisions, so that the Military would be self contained & his Military Staff would be able to control more directly the Agents (Head) in the Field’. He also ‘said we particularly lacked a good organisation Section resembling that in M.I.5’. Cumming, who also learned on 26 October of Colonel French’s plans to take over the Allied Intelligence Mission which had been established in Italy, clearly felt that a positive response was the best way to fight his ground and retain his authority, telling Browning (who was all for appealing to the Prime Minister) that ‘to bring about a difference between my 2 Chiefs’ was ‘the greatest disservice he could render his country at the present time’. After some negotiation Cumming worked out a scheme which Macdonogh explained on 12 November to Admiral Hall. Each of the main customer departments was to have representatives on Cumming’s staff. Subject to his ‘co-ordination and direction’, they would ‘send instructions to head agents regarding such information as is required by their respective departments’.

As it emerged at the end of November, the new Head Office structure was divided into six sections. Section I, Economics, was put under Colonel Browning, who nominally remained Cumming’s second-in-command. Sections II and III covered Aviation and Naval respectively. Section IV, Military, was headed by Major Dansey, through whom Macdonogh said he would issue instructions to Cumming. This was the largest section, and Dansey not only became responsible for the preparation of military reports and liaison with MI5 and Scotland Yard on counter-espionage and counter-revolutionary matters, but he was also put in charge of the Political Section V, headed by Colonel Rhys Samson, a ‘secret service expert’, experienced in dealing with agents, who had served in Athens and on various liaison duties with the French. Section VI, Organisation, encompassed administration and technical matters, such as coding, which were grouped together, as much (it appears) for convenience as for any other reason. Smaller Prisoners-of-War and Circulation sections remained separate. The latter existed to distribute material to customer departments and other organisations. By the beginning of 1918 the core Head Office staff (not including administrative and clerical support personnel) comprised some forty officers, more than five times the 1915 total.

While Cumming had clearly fallen in with the Director of Military Intelligence’s wishes, he also managed to secure continuing support from Hardinge, who wrote to Macdonogh that the Foreign Office ‘should have been disappointed if we had looked for success from any scheme which diminished the authority of the man at the top . . . Much will depend’, he continued, ‘on the extent to which C asserts himself, but he must be given a fair start. Provided it is clear that he is intended to be master in his own house, he ought to be able to make a success of things.’ But first Cumming had to implement the Head Office changes. ‘This office’, he wrote in his diary at the end of November, ‘is much upset at the new organisation & I have had to reply to a lot of objection and criticism.’ He hoped that the new arrangement, wherein ‘each section officer [would] specialise on his own subject & stick to it’, while he was ‘to control the whole – run the office & co-ordinate the lot’, ought to ‘improve the present system’, which allowed agents abroad merely to ‘send in anything’ so long as there was ‘plenty of it’. This had resulted in predominantly economic reporting ‘with a little second rate C.E. work’. By the time the new system was formally implemented in December 1917, the complaints seem to have evaporated. In the opinion of Boyle Somerville, indeed, the change was a striking success, though the numbers of reports must also have