96 • CHURCHILL, SIR WINSTON
Later he married Odette Samson and wrote three volumes of his
memoirs,Of Their Own Choice,Duel of Wits, andThe Spirit in the
Cage.CHURCHILL, SIR WINSTON.Always fascinated by intelligence,
Winston Churchill had been introduced to the need for good informa-
tion from the bazaars when he was commissioned by theDaily Tele-
graphto write about the Afghan revolt on the northwest frontier of
India in 1897. His views on the shortcomings of the British Army’s
intelligence organization were reinforced by his experiences in the
Boer War, when he became an articulate advocate for the ‘‘money
and brains’’ desired by the intelligence service. In 1902 Churchill de-
manded in the House of Commons ‘‘an efficient and well-staffed In-
telligence Department.’’
When the Secret Service Bureau was created in 1909, Churchill,
as president of the Board of Trade, received a briefing from the direc-
tor of military operations, General John Ewart. Then, as home secre-
tary in 1910, he was called upon to defendSir Robert Anderson,
the assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard until 1901, who had su-
pervised the undercover activities of Thomas Beach, alias ‘‘Major
Henri le Caron,’’ when both men became the subject of political con-
troversy.
In 1911, when Churchill was appointed to the Admiralty, he was
kept informed of thecounterespionageinvestigations conducted to
catch German spies in the naval dockyards, and in 1914 took a close
interest in the codebreaking activities of his director of naval educa-
tion,Sir Alfred Ewing. Although Churchill may have been aware
that some Boer ciphers had been cracked and exploited during the
South African war, as first lord of the Admiralty he was fully indoc-
trinated intoRoom 40and the astonishing successes achieved by Ew-
ing’s team of cryptographers, among them the solution to the
Zimmermann Telegramin 1917 that helped bring the United States
into the war.
In 1920, as secretary of state for war, Churchill continued to have
access to intercepts, and he was persuaded by the director of intelli-
gence at Scotland Yard,Sir Basil Thomson; thedirector of military
intelligence, Sir William Thwaites; and thedirector of naval intelli-
gence, AdmiralHugh Sinclair, that the spread of Bolshevism had