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convicted of espionage against Germany, was allowed to leave the country in November 1915. A postwar account of ‘Naval Intelligence by Secret Service methods’ noted that ‘along the Danish coasts, on both east and west sides of the peninsula’ there had been ‘several groups’ of coast-watchers, ‘usually mutually ignorant of each other’s existence, so that some sort of check could be maintained’. There were also ‘organisations on the Swedish western coast, particularly on The Sound, opposite Copenhagen, and at Malmo’. The watch here was ‘very close and effective’. In places the channel was barely half a mile wide, ‘and even submarines were thus clearly visible, except on dark nights or very thick weather’. No trace of these reports, or further assessment of their value, has apparently survived.

As everywhere else, Cumming was under pressure to provide intelligence from his Danish operation. Denmark was most useful as a base from which to target Germany. ‘D.1’ had contacts in German munitions circles and reported in November 1915 that he knew one particular Dutch firm had been ‘shipping ore for Krupps’. In May 1916 ‘D.10’ delivered a long and detailed account of ‘internal conditions’ in Germany which (no doubt to its readers’ satisfaction) highlighted the many shortages caused by the Allied blockade. Lack of wheat flour had led to the manufacture of ‘Straw Bread’ using 15-20 per cent of straw flour: ‘Tastes unpleasantly sour and bitter, and . . . irritates the intestines’. Rubber was so scarce that copper wire was now ‘insulated with a sort of paper’. Substitutes for cotton and jute were hard to find. ‘As an auxiliary there is now manufactured woven paper stuff mixed with yarn.’

‘D.2’ was a head agent with a productive subordinate in Vamdrup in southern Denmark who in March 1917 reported details of the extensive help Danish State Railways was giving to the Germans. In January 1918 he cited a German soldier on leave reporting ‘thousands of troops daily passing through Hamburg [and] Hanover from Russia’, which was probably part of the build-up for the German spring offensive. Reflecting the higher society gossip which also came the way of Cumming’s men, ‘D.5’, quoting the wife of a ‘highly placed’ official in the Danish Foreign Office, reported that the German minister in Copenhagen was proposing a close alliance between Germany and Denmark, with the ‘Danish speaking part [of] Schleswig to go to Denmark as compensation’. In April 1918, ‘D.62’ returned from Germany with some high-level military gossip from a staff officer on General von Gallwitz’s staff. Hindenburg and Ludendorff (the effective military dictators of Germany) ‘had ordered [an] offensive between Verdun and the Vosges, in Duke Albrecht of Württemberg’s army group. It was expected in April but delayed owing to disputes between Generals Gallwitz and Bothmer. Gallwitz wishes to attack but Bothmer does not, as he states losses would be too heavy. Duke has no control over them.’24

Smaller-scale operations in Sweden and Norway produced similar kinds of material. Asked by the War Trade Intelligence Department in London to investigate the suspiciously large volume of honey being imported into Sweden, one of Cumming’s men ‘tapped the casks on the quays at Gothenburg’ and discovered that ‘more than 80% of it was pure rubber’, apparently bound for Germany. In April 1917 a report came from ‘S.50’ in Stockholm that a ‘lady governess returned from Hamburg states that food riots occur there weekly’. The following month he reported that he had attended ‘a big private dinner’ with ‘nearly all the big Jewish bankers and financiers here in Stockholm’ and had canvassed their opinion about German and Russian politics. They thought that the new liberal-democratic Menshevik government in Russia, installed following the February Revolution, had ‘now succeeded in making its position secure, particularly from the very violent ultra-socialist party’ (the Bolsheviks). Several of the bankers who had recently visited Germany said that the position was ‘going from bad to worse, and that Austria