British Secret Service During the Great War — Key Ideas to Explore

A Practitioner’s Critique of Intelligence Bureaucracy

Everitt devotes his second chapter to a sweeping comparison of secret service systems, and his judgments are pointed. He praises the French and Dutch services while excoriating British 'bungling incompetence' and the 'impassiveness of the Foreign Office.' The chapter is less a history than a seasoned agent’s grievance list: jealousies between big departments, reckless extravagance, and a failure to recruit business-minded operatives. He cites examples—without naming names—of wasted funds and missed opportunities. The tone is that of an insider who believes the service could be far more efficient. Readers should note that Everitt’s criticisms are personal and anecdotal; he offers no documentary evidence, and his comparisons to German methods are broad. The chapter serves as a window into the frustrations of field agents rather than an objective audit.

Tradecraft in Practice: Codes, Covers, and Close Calls

Everitt’s descriptions of operational methods are among the most concrete passages. He explains a 'grammatical code' that embeds messages in ordinary text, a 'knot code' using tied string, and a 'geometrical code' based on patterns. He recounts a misconstrued message that led to a domestic tragedy, and a false message that exposed an open code. His preferred cover is journalism—a role he had held for twenty years—though he warns that it had become 'worked threadbare' by 1914. In one episode, he poses as a special correspondent while negotiating with a Norwegian oil merchant to cut off supplies to Germany. The merchant’s effusive gratitude and offer of a decoration are described with dry amusement. These passages ground the book in the daily realities of deception and improvisation.

The Norwegian Oil Mission: A Case Study in Economic Warfare

One of the most detailed operational sequences concerns Everitt’s mission to prevent a Norwegian merchant from selling oil to Germany. The narrative follows a clear arc: initial contact, a written undertaking from the merchant, refusal of a bribe, and a celebratory lunch. Everitt notes that the merchant later declared himself a millionaire in Norwegian kroner. The episode illustrates how secret service work could blend negotiation, economic pressure, and personal rapport. Everitt’s refusal of payment and his insistence on a written guarantee suggest a methodical approach. Yet he withholds the outcome—'whether the assurances given and the guarantee obtained were carried out'—leaving the reader with an unresolved thread. This restraint is typical of the book: Everitt often hints at larger stories he cannot or will not tell.

The Perils of Being Watched: Surveillance and Flight

Chapter XII, 'Shadowed by Police,' shifts to the dangers of operating under suspicion. Everitt describes how his journalist cover, though natural to him, made him a target: 'Every foreign newspaper man on the Continent in recent years has been suspected, marked, and watched from the start.' He recounts being sold to the police by a fallen star, intercepting adulations, and facing danger signals that forced him to flee. The chapter includes an arrest warrant postponed and a double-tracking episode involving a Herr Schmidt. Everitt’s tone remains controlled, but the accumulation of threats—temptations, tests, flight—conveys the constant pressure of his work. The excerpts do not reveal how he escaped, leaving the reader to infer the outcome from the chapter’s title and the narrative’s forward momentum.

Everitt’s book is best read as a memoir of tradecraft rather than a comprehensive history. He writes from memory, with the biases and gaps of a participant. The excerpts show a man who values efficiency, distrusts bureaucracy, and takes quiet pride in his own resourcefulness. Readers should approach his claims about German espionage and British incompetence as one agent’s perspective, not established fact. The unresolved episodes—like the oil merchant’s fate—remind us that this is a partial account, shaped by what Everitt chose to reveal.

Nicholas Everitt’s account of code rooms and quiet nerves stayed with me long after I closed it—that ache of carrying secrets. It made me think of the French poilus in A Blue Devil of France: Epic figures and stories of the Great War, 1914-1918 — Inside the Classic, their own silent endurance under a different kind of weight. Both left me just sitting there, remembering how ordinary courage can be.