Roots of British Intelligence - Essay Example

During the end of the 19th century, the British army became more and more professionalized. During this time, the War Office started to standardize intelligence operations with the transformation of the Topographical and Statistical Department, which had been formed following the intelligence problems during the Crimean War, into the Intelligence Branch of War Office in 1873. Even though the military officer corps at this time demonstrated increasing professionalism, this did not necessarily spill over into the Intelligence Branch. At the time, military intelligence was mostly restricted to focusing on Britain's imperial affairs rather than any Continental issues. Also important to note was the fact that the formation of this Intelligence Branch did not create a service-wide acceptance of the contributions of intelligence to war or peace. During the Boer War, Britain was forced to realize the importance of intelligence, as it failed to incorporate intelligence operations in its strategy and implementation. This forced Britain to focus in on how intelligence could be used during both war and peacetime. 1 A main obstacle to the place of intelligence in the 20th century British army focused on the delineation of the objectives of intelligence operations as well as being able to recognize what kind of person would be required to place those concepts into effect. It is important to remember that the concept of peacetime preparation for field intelligence had not been distinguished clearly at this time, and gathering military intelligence during times of peace was very overt as well as ad hoc in approach. Furthermore, other issues stood out as well. Wartime interactions between intelligence officers and soldiers were often filled with feelings of mistrust, and there was also no solid approach or agreement about training different intelligence corps at this time. The time of the Boer War through the beginning of the First World War demonstrated the makings of a commitment to intelligence as a need, and a desire to train professional intelligence officer corps developed. This commitment and appreciation, however, were not adequately translated into policy implementation, and the outbreak of war in 1914 found Britain's military intelligence preparations to be woefully inadequate for the issues that would lay ahead. 2 The military was able to recognize from the start that the type of officer to be involved in intelligence would be that of a different caliber. As far as the proper training of these men was concerned, however, it was open to some argument. It was obvious to see that the purpose of instructions and the lessons learned were not used at the turn-of-the-century War office. A good example of this is the fact that the start of the Boer War actually revealed that British military intelligence was extremely disorganized. It was obvious that the military could not predict of prepare for the start of the war, and the Intelligence Division's efforts here were hurt because they did not have enough training or resources, probably resulting from the fact that the army's leadership was also not interested in making the best use of them. However, as the Boer War came to a close, it became clear that British intelligence was evolving into something that was much more organized and useable, although this certainly did not promise for this concept of intelligence to play a large role in military affairs. Another factor that hurt this development of intelligence was the fact that all of the intelligence work made during the war was de-emphasized after the post-war demobilization. The Royal Commission on the War in South Africa, which reviewed all aspects of the origins and conduct of the war, seemed very happy with the prewar focus of the intelligence department as well as its ability to become more organized. As a result, they suggested that there was no necessity for general departmental reform or a more permanent or consequential peacetime intelligence establishment. The ad hoc nature of British wartime intelligence appeared, therefore, to have been reinforced by Britain's experience in the South African War.3 The Hardwicke Committee would form a similar opinion on this, and in August 1902 took a look at the concept of the permanent establishment of an intelligence force for Britain. The committee utilized information from several commanders that had participated in the South African War, all of whom seemed to agree that those involved in intelligence did not need any other additional or special training. The commanders did feel that there was a necessity for greater intimate knowledge of the country, but prior experience and work in the intelligence fields was not seen as necessarily desirable.4 The possibility of a European War began to shift some of Britain's focus on answering the question of what types of roles intelligence might play if such a war took place. The shift that appeared after the Boer War began to display the fact that intelligence in a European war would be a very different project when compared to the colonial wars that Britain was more used to fighting. Some in the War Office, however, felt that it would actually be easier to undertake intelligence in these European nations. This argument was based on the fact that European rival armies were often predictable, and this might actually provide for a more straightforward answer. This was not the opinion that was most commonly viewed by the army. Most people believed it would be a huge challenge to British military intelligence to fight in a war against one or more of the European powers. For example, E. Edmonds stated in Jan 1908: "in European warfare, if we are ever engaged in it, far greater vigilance, far closer watching of the enemy and far greater secrecy will be required than against the foes we have been accustomed to meet."5 Edmonds went on to further state it had been over 100 years since Britain had faced such a challenge and this included not only intelligence within the military, but also leadership, initiative, and strategy. Edmonds felt that this lack of preparation should be overcome by using increased vigilance and preparation in peacetime through intelligence. It must be noted that this finding actually was in sharp contrast to the concepts delivered by the Hardwicke Committee, which had stated that it would be impossible to avoid a period of adjustment at the outset of war, during which junior officers would need to become accustomed to their intelligence duties and would thus be unable to accomplish their intelligence-gathering appraising roles.6 Now that the fact intelligence in European warfare would have its own unusual items to focus in on, the concept emerged that wartime intelligence notions would have to be prepared for during times of peace. The Boer War had demonstrated the fat that junior officers could not become successful intelligence officers with the speed that would be needed if a European War did break out. Therefore, the traditional concept of training intelligence only during times of war started to shift. A training course was established by the War Office that concerned wartime duties for field intelligence officers. The War Office also began to present important publications having to do with intelligence. The first important publication came about in 1904 and was written by Lt. Col. David Henderson and titled Field intelligence, Its Principles and Practices (1904). Henderson had been Commander-in-Chief Lord Kitchener's director of military intelligence during the Boer War, and his experience reflected on reconnaissance, suggesting the primary focus and practices of an intelligence department during wartime, all of which are based on his own experiences in the field. He also produced a later book titled The Art of Reconnaissance (1914), providing a standard focus on how to collect intelligence, analyze it, and disseminate it. His books are the first signs of approaching intelligence in the military from a fundamental, textbook-focused standpoint.7 Although Henderson's coveted corps was not made until 1913, in 1907 it was deemed necessary to supplement the existing manuals with the Eastern Command's Intelligence and Reconnaissance Course as well as other lectures that were made to prepare army officers for intelligence during a European war. The formation of these courses, which were held every year after 1907, was important because of two primary items. First, the courses demonstrate the growing commitment to intelligence and the focus on the need to prepare during peacetime. For example, lectures entitled "Acquisition of Intelligence," "Organization of the Secret Service," and "Intelligence in Peace: Work Junior Officers are Likely to be Called Upon to Carry Out" demonstrates the interest in intelligence. Second, the examples from which the lessons were drawn, although still mostly focused on British involvement in South Africa, were exemplified by the lecture "On Intelligence Duties and on the Organisation of the Intelligence Department in the South African War" were broadened to include the Russo-Japanese War.8 Whereas the utility of the Boer War s a model for intelligence training lay in an emphasis on military reconnaissance as a contributing factor to both victories and defeats, the Russo-Japanese War was seen as an excellent indicator of the decisive role secret intelligence could play in determining the outcome of military conflicts. First in Edmond's 1907 lecture on "Intelligence in European Warfare," and later in a lecture given by Colonel J.A. L. Haldane, the assistant director of military operations and intelligence, in March 1909, entitled "Japanese and Russian Intelligence Systems," participants in the Intelligence and Reconnaissance Courses were treated to a close examination of the strengths and limitations of the intelligence systems of these two nations. Similarly, the Indian army received a discussion of intelligence in the Russo-Japanese War as part of a lecture given by Captain Ch. H. G. Black at the Staff College in Quetta. 9 Of course, the Indian army's emphasis on intelligence had for a long time been admittedly greater than that of the home army due to the peacetime intelligence demands inherent in the colonial administration and strategic defense of the subcontinent. In addition, a formal Intelligence Branch of the Indian army Quartermaster General's department had been in existence since 1892. Therefore, the inclusion of such a lecture in the officer training program of the Indian army indicated less of a shift in policy than was occurring in the home army. 10 In these instructional lectures, a great deal of credit for the Russian defeat was given the prowess of Japanese intelligence; the Japanese are praised for what Haldane called "their natural aptitude for spying.They are, as a nation, well-endowed with Oriental cunning, self-control, and that reticence which becomes less and less a distinguishing feature the further west in the world one travels."11 Although no one was suggesting that it would be possible to retrain the British national psyche to be more in tune with what was viewed to be the Japanese way of doing things, Japan's focus on peacetime intelligence preparation was focused on as being perhaps the biggest contributing issue to its wartime successes. Haldane, who had been with the Japanese troops during the war as an observer, described their training standards. "It was recognized in the Japanese army, that an untrained spy, equally with an untrained scoutwho has no knowledge of the language, organization, dress, and characteristics of the army which he is intended to report upon is likely to be of very little use, and indeed will be a danger rather than otherwise."12 In contrast, the Russians were dreadfully unprepared for the war in Manchuria, having developed no network of spies nor any sort of guidance to place intelligence in the field. Russian officials also readily offset tales of systemic inefficiency by leaking accounts of what intelligence successes they did manage to score, undermining any chance that Russian Intelligence would overcome its legacy of deficient peacetime planning. Therefore, the most important lesson to be learned from the Russo-Japanese War by the British military who were focusing on issues of intelligence was that no level of preparation could be too much. Also, the preparation should be orientated in two directions: toward the making of specialists who could get intelligence that had to do with the enemy, and also toward the making of the military establishment as a whole to the importance for secrecy so that the enemy cannot, in turn, gather intelligence against Britain. As for the latter, the importance of censorship, observation of foreigners, restriction of written orders, and troop concealment was stressed, and officers were urged to impress upon their troops an awareness of intelligence issues. The collection of information regarding the enemy was to be the responsibility of every man, not just those in the intelligence department. Habits of observation were to be developed in both officers and men. Edmonds suggested that Britain follow Germany's lead be requiring its sentries to describe in meticulous detail anything that passed while they were on duty, even in peacetime, thus daily strengthening of the powers of surveillance in even the lowest ranks. 13 Haldane emphasized the crucial importance of secrecy within the military establishment, comparing the levels of Japanese and Russian success in maintaining secrecy even at home: "It is said that if two Japanese Officers meet at a railway station neither thinks of asking the other where he is going or what duty he is on, as he would not be told if he did ask; whereas a Russian Officer has recently written 'You need only to sit in the train from St. Petersburg to Tsarkoe Selo to hear all that is being done or even thought of in the highest military circles."14 It was clear, in Haldane's opinion, that the tasks of secrecy and observation needed to be vital concerns of the military establishment well beyond the limited official intelligence community. Although there was now a more focused commitment on training junior officers properly for intelligence duties, it appeared that the actual instruction was still quite basic. There were few departures from Henderson's original books and not much added to the curriculum as the years passed. Starting from the presumable focus that the concept of an intelligence officer is to get information relative to the enemy, and that information obtained should be passed along as quickly as possible, these lessons also included admonitions for the cultivation of good manners and polite behavior told colleagues and prisoners alike. Intelligence officers were also told to always have cash in case they needed to pay an agent. As far as preparations for specific areas of war were concerned, officers were taught to be very familiar with the command and fighting approach of enemy armies, as well as developing a familiarity with the language necessary to analyze the evidence being gathered. However, no provisions were developed for formal instruction as far as the acquisition of knowledge was concerned If war did break out, these intelligence officers would have to know everything that they could about the enemy, much of which could be obtained by focusing on intelligence handbooks, topographical descriptions, language books, and reading newspapers and articles about the enemy. Intimate acquaintance with a possible enemy was not really considered to be a main focus of intelligence training, and it was usually suggested that officers should study these subjects when they had spare time. Thus, instead of focusing time on the development of knowledge on a possible enemy, the British limited its peacetime instruction of intelligence officers to being focused on that of practical field intelligence duties. This system therefore demonstrated two primary shortcomings. First, the level of instruction was simply too basic and gender to really assist Britain's intelligence focus prior to World War I. Second, for all the signs of a desire to improve intelligence operations in peacetime, the training programs were simply too modest to really do much to cover the deficiencies Britain had already demonstrated. For instance, the Eastern Command's Intelligence and Reconnaissance Course sounds like a magnificent idea until one realized that the actual course trained only eight officers per year (Watson, 2004). British intelligence focus and training efforts before the outbreak of World War I was really filling in the old clich of "too little, too late." The publication of the War Office manuals and the institution of regular courses and lectures on the subject of filed intelligence do point to the evolution of an intelligence ethos in prewar Britain. The attempts to form guidelines for practical field intelligence based upon the wartime experiences of Britain as well as other powers to show a commitment to intelligence issues during peacetime, therefore demonstrating a new awareness of the role intelligence might play during both war and peacetimes. Regardless, as late as 1913 the director of the Indian army's Intelligence Division complained about the lack of task-specific training for intelligence officers: "if any of us were ordered on service tomorrow, many of us would find that, instead of having the details of our work at our fingers' ends, and being of immediate assistance to the General Officer Commanding and to the troops, we would be picking up our business slowly and gaining experience and their expense. We should thus be making them the victims of our ignorance-ignorance which might easily have been transformed into knowledge had we received some previous training in the special technique of our work" 15 Britain's failure to translate its desire to intelligence into successful training and preparation on a broad scale resulted in the traditional wartime scramble to form an effective intelligence division. The British military had been aware that the coming war would demand a level of expertise they had theretofore been unable to manage at the outset of hostilities, yet this awareness produced insufficiently substantial results. Captain Black of the Indian Army stated: "Modern war will not be heralded by a flourish of trumpets but will come like a thief in the night, and to catch this thief you must set a thief."16 References Black, C. (1913) , 34h Horse, "Secret Service," lecture delivered at Staff College, Quetta. Haswell, Jock. British Military Intelligence. (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973). Boer War. Edmonds, J. "Intelligence in European Warfare," (Lecture), General Staff, January 1908. Fergusson, Thomas. British Military Intelligence, 1870-1914. Frederick, Maryland: University Publications of America, 1984. Henderson, D. Field Intelligence: Its Principles and Practices. London: HMSO, 1904 Henderson, David. The Art of Reconnaissance. London: John Murray, 1914. Smith, Rashida. An Early History of British Military Intelligence. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001. Stratchan, Hew. The Politics of the British Army. Oxford: Claendon Press, 1997. Thomas, Justice. The Start of British Intelligence. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003. Watson, E. A Brief History of British Military Intelligence. Yale: Yale UP, 2004. Read More