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German lines’. During 1917 officers were also sent to Geneva, Zurich, Basle and Lausanne. Not all these were successful, and the representative in Zurich was ‘relieved from his post on account of drink’. Although the hope was to get agents into both Germany and Austria, a review of the Swiss reports suggests that the operation did little more than retail a fair bit of gossip, report on the domestic political situation and provide some economic intelligence on German embargo-breaking operations. There was a smattering of reports from diplomats and other sources with Near Eastern connections about the Ottoman empire, which had come into the war on Germany’s side in October 1914. The Swiss reports, however, are notable for a handful of MI1(c) comments indicating that, in a few cases at least, some evaluation was applied to material before it was circulated to customer departments. A report about Hungarian politics from Geneva on 30 November 1917 entitled ‘The views of Dr. Oscar Jaszi of the University of Budapest’ had a ‘prefatory note by M.I.1.c.’: ‘Dr. Oscar Jaszi is a man of high character and is probably the most honest and straightforward of the Magyar political leaders.’31 A qualified meteorologist was attached to Cumming’s Berne office. His sole function was to ascend ‘to a certain height up a mountain twice a day’ and telegraph to London ‘the direction and force of the wind’. It was reported that ‘the purpose of this was intended partly to work out the possibility of gas attacks and partly for the information of the Air Force’. Rather to Harran’s dismay (though perhaps reflecting a comparative lack of productivity), in January 1918 Cumming brought Vischer back to take over in Berne, and he remained in charge until the end of the war.

Cumming exploited the Military Control Office system for both cover and intelligence generally. His Bureau, moreover, was evidently a convenient mechanism through which the offices could be funded. A similar system appears to have obtained regarding the Naval Intelligence Division’s existing organisation in Spain, which as a maritime country with many overseas trading interests was an important target for blockade-watching. Although in his diary Cumming noted sending men to Spain in August 1914 and April 1915, these do not appear to have been part of a network. In July 1915 Blinker Hall told Cumming that he was ‘to link up with the Spanish organisation’ and provide a car for Hall’s man in Vigo. In 1916, Cumming proposed, with Hall’s approval, to set up a ‘military intelligence mission’ in Lisbon. In September Cumming was more expansive. He told Hall ‘of our proposal to start a C.E. [counter-espionage] branch for Spain with headquarters at Hendaye, & that this would include a nucleus for recruiting men to go into Germany’. Hans Vischer was put in charge as Military Control Officer. A post-war report noted that he had been instructed ‘not to do any S.S. work’ since ‘during the whole of the war the Admiralty conducted S.S. work in Spain and Portugal’. By February 1917 Vischer had a staff of eight with offices in Madrid, Seville, Bilbao, Vigo and Barcelona. As in the Low Countries, military intelligence tried to muscle in on the territory. In January 1917 Cumming asked Wallinger ‘to cut out recruiting in Spain altogether as far as my work is concerned’, and in February 1918 he noted that Colonel French in the War Office was ‘making arrangements’ with an army officer in Gibraltar ‘to carry out some form of S.S. in Spain!’. In May 1917 an apparent proposal that Cumming might take over the Admiralty operation there (which he did not in any case wish to do) left Admiral Hall ‘very angry’.

The position in Iberia reflected the ambiguous relationships the Secret Service Bureau had with other British intelligence organisations during the First World War. Cumming’s uncertainty in October 1916 as to the exact number of his ‘staff and agents’ in Spain (‘abt 50’) suggests that this may principally have been the Admiralty’s network, paid through Cumming’s budget, but over which in practice he had no control.