242 • HOARE, SIR SAM
HOARE, SIR SAM.Sam Hoare was the MP for Chelsea when he was
first recruited for intelligence duties, and he never lost the skepticism
his experience during World War I gave him. In 1930, shortly before
his appointment as secretary of state for India, Hoare published the
first volume of his memoirs,The Fourth Seal: The End of a Russian
Chapter. His disclosures did nothing to jeopardize his political career
and he was later to be foreign secretary, first lord of the Admiralty,
lord privy seal, air minister, and—after clashing withWinston
Churchill—British ambassador in Madrid.
Hoare had learned Russian apparently in the hope that this would
enable him to lead an interesting life and travel abroad. In March
1916 his linguistic skill brought him before Admiral Mansfield
Smith-Cumming, the first chief of theSecret Intelligence Service
(SIS), and he was dispatched to Petrograd on a mission that he de-
scribed vaguely as having to do withcounterespionage. Hoare re-
turned to England the following year, having completed a survey of
‘‘intelligence possibilities’’ in Russia, and in June was appointed
head of the British Intelligence mission to Petrograd. Once again he
made his way to Russia, accompanied by his wife. He recalls:
My first duty according to my instructions was to put myself into the clos-
est personal touch with the chief of the Russian Secret Service. I found
there was no such person. In Russia every department seemed to have a
Secret Service and nobody exercised any central control.Hoare’s further encounter with SIS took place in Madrid upon his
appointment there as British ambassador in 1940. He saw his task as
preventing General Francisco Franco from joining the Axis powers,
and he regarded the local SIS station as a source of potential embar-
rassment. Not long after his arrival, the SIS representative, Colonel
Edward de Renzy Martin, who was operating under military attache ́
cover, was declared persona non grata for ‘‘attempting to obtain stra-
tegic information,’’ and this confirmed Hoare’s worst suspicions.
Thus whenDonald Darlingarrived on a reconnaissance mission
prior to extending the SIS station to accommodate a permanent es-
cape-and-evasion expert from P15, Hoare was not just uncooperative
but obstructive and ordered Darling’s immediate return to Lisbon.
Hoare died in May 1959. In his second volume of memoirs,Am-
bassador on Special Assignment, published in 1946 after the author