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understand, is an integral and essential part of a complex and far-reaching system’. This was easier said than done, though for a while after Hoare took over in July 1916 things went well. ‘Identifications’, namely the supply from London of Western Front identifications and their distribution to the Russian General Staff and, conversely, the transmission of Russian identifications to London, were considered ‘most satisfactory’, and, reported Macdonogh, ‘Hoare obtained for us most valuable information regarding war trade.’ Hoare’s own recollection of the work was that the greater part was ‘of a routine character, the signalling of suspected persons, the holding up of contraband, the transmission of [Russian] agents’ reports, and the exchange of departmental memoranda’. ‘For days’, however, Hoare would wonder ‘what good the office was doing, and then, unexpectedly, some piece of Intelligence would come into my hands that would compensate me for all my previous waste of time. Now and again, I would obtain a really important report upon the internal condition of Germany.’ He was, for example, given the confidential statistics provided for a ministerial statement on food supply and manpower to be made in a secret sitting of the Reichstag (parliament). ‘Sometimes, also, though not often, I obtained valuable information about the movements of the German Fleet in the Baltic.’8

By the autumn of 1916, however, Knox had launched another bid to take over all Hoare’s military work and a rather arid bureaucratic argument commenced over who should have the room in the Russian War Office. While Knox evidently coveted it, Hoare maintained that he could not continue his work if he lost it, since the official position that it provided gave him an important and essential status vis-à-vis the Russians. Both men appealed to London where Macdonogh ruled in Hoare’s favour regarding the room, but laid down that Knox was to decide on the distribution of the information produced and Thornhill was to be liaison officer between the two teams. When in January 1917 the mission and the embassy were required to send officers to Romania, which left them both short-handed, Knox returned to the charge and asked that Sir Henry Wilson, who was about to visit Russia with a high-powered Allied mission led by Lord Milner, should be given authority during his stay to decide on the organisation of intelligence in Russia. ‘I think’, remarked Macdonogh to Wilson, ‘the trouble is that we have two very difficult people to deal with. They both have considerable ability and are accustomed to be independent.’9

Wilson’s visit gave Hoare the opportunity to report on the work of MI1(c)’s operation in Russia. By February 1917 it had eighteen staff (including Hoare): nine commissioned officers and nine civilians (including one female, Miss W. V. Spink). The main duties of the Military Section, under Captain John Dymoke Scale, concerned identifications and the distribution of military information, while the Military Control Section, under Alley (now promoted captain), dealt with ‘the control of all passengers travelling from Russia to England or France, contre-espionage of every kind, and the co-ordination of our Secret Service with the Russian Secret Service’. Alley was also responsible for the exchange of naval intelligence, on occasions receiving from the Russian Admiralty ‘information of the greatest importance as to the movements of enemy ships’. The War Trade Section worked directly under Hoare himself and handled the forwarding of statistics of all sorts and assisted with the Russian ‘Black List’ of blockade-breakers. This section, Hoare asserted, had ‘been extremely useful both to London and Petrograd’. He claimed, for example, that a report which he had written had ‘materially altered the conduct of the Blockade and . . . smoothed the trade relations between Russia and England’. Hoare concluded his report by strongly arguing that the work of both the Military Section and the intelligence mission would be seriously damaged if responsibility for the former were given