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wits single-handed against a great organisation.
    But in actual practice the work was often dull enough and discouraging enough. There were plenty of failures. Months of hard slogging and patient research would suddenly be found to be wasted. Many an absolutely blank wall was encountered, through which no wits could find a way.
    And it was a lonely life. More than one intelligence man was separated from his family for two or three years at a time. Most of the volunteers imagined that it was a job for a week or two, a sort of raid into ‘enemy territory’ and a dash back to safety. It was not. The good intelligence man had to dig himself in and stick it, bearing loneliness and fear and excitement and triumph in complete silence. There was not a soul he could talk to about the work, not a soul to whom he could go for advice if he was doubtful. He might, perhaps, know the name of one or two other men who were doing the work also, but he did not foregather with them, or indeed get into direct touch with them in any way. His whole life had to be self-contained. He had to cover his own tracks and take the utmost care not to uncover anyone else’s.
    Strong nerves were needed to stand the strain. ‘The strong silent man’ of the lady novelists was the right type, and even he cracked occasionally and had to be rested.

CHAPTER 3
WHILE GERMANY PREPARED FOR WAR
    B EFORE THE WAR the secret service budget of Great Britain was very considerably smaller than that of any other of the great powers. Precise figures are not available, but, roughly speaking, Germany was spending six times as much money as this country on that branch of intelligence work that was concerned with the discovery of the military secrets of neighbouring states.
    Without proposing to discuss at length the ethics of such activities when conducted in time of peace, we feel it necessary to attempt to differentiate between secret service or intelligence operations on the one hand, and downright espionage on the other. The intelligence agent is in much the same position as a newspaper reporter, in that he is generally trying to procure information that the other side in unwilling to divulge. In bothcases the work involves not merely the collection of basic facts, but also their analysis and logical amplification by methods of deduction. In intelligence as in newspaper work, some of the most brilliant coups have been achieved by the shrewd appreciation and collation of isolated facts, which, taken by themselves, appeared at first sight to possess only minor significance.
    There can be no question as to the moral right of the state to keep a vigilant eye on the military preparations of any foreign power for which there are reasonable grounds to suspect them to be a potential enemy.
    In pre-war days Germany ranked first in that category. In her case, indeed, it was a matter of certainty rather than suspicion. Apart from her intensive naval activities, the object of which was unmistakable, German agents swarmed into this country for the sole purpose of prying into our maritime defences.
    During the period from 1908 to the outbreak of war, for every agent we had in central Europe there were five or six German emissaries in Great Britain. These figures apply only to professionals. Were amateurs to be included, the ratio of German to British would be ten to one.
    The German methods were on the whole unimaginative, clumsy, and ineffective, involving a great deal of pseudo-espionage and very little analysis or deduction. As related in a subsequent chapter, German secret service reports sent out from England were intercepted and read by our security service over a long period preceding the war, and it was to us a constant source of amazement that the Berlin authorities should be wasting large sums of money on information that was mainly worthless. Many of these reports were so patently inaccurate that only a modicum of technical knowledge was needed to expose their