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Show GERMANS WERE BADLY INFORMED ; Intelligence Service in War Was ! Failure. j ALLIES' SERVICE EFFICIENT Failure to Win War -tn First Few i Weeks Directly Due to Bad German ' Intelligence, Says British Director General Allenby's Palestine Ad-! Ad-! vance, Which Looked Hazardous, ) Based on Information of Every ' Movement of Enemy. ; If good Allied Intelligence did not , win the war, then at least bad Ger-j Ger-j man intelligence lost it. That was the conclusion announced by Lieut, j Gen. Sir G. M. W. MncDonogh, now i adjutant general of the British army, but during the war director of military intelligence, in an address before the I Royal Artillery Institution at Wool-' Wool-' wieh. "Germany's intelligence failed her from the very beginning of the campaign," cam-paign," he began. "It grossly overestimated overes-timated the time Russia would require to mobilize her armies. The Germans calculated that Russia could not advance ad-vance in force before the middle of September, 1014, and consequently that there would be six weeks available to defeat the enemy on the western fronl before It become necessary to turn to the east. "The intelligence of the Germans regarding re-garding the western front was equally faulty. Little or nothing was known by them of the movements of the British Brit-ish expeditionary force. When Von Kluck reached Mons he was surprised to find the British in possession, for he had been told by his Intelligence service ser-vice that there was no enemy within fifty miles of the place. "Ought to Have Known." "I would not like to say that the Germans ought to have known many things which subsequent events showed they did not know, but I do say they ought to have known more about them; and the failure of Germany Ger-many to win the war during its first few weeks was directly due to the shortcomings of Its Intelligence service, ser-vice, "The German intelligence failed in 1914; the British Intelligence succeeded suc-ceeded in 1918. You will remembei Lord Allenby's great campaign li Palestine in that year and you maj have wondered at the audacity of hi; operations. It is true that in wai you cannot expect a really great sue cess unless you are prepared to take risks, but these risks must be reason able ones. To the uninitiated It maj sometimes have appeared that Lord Allenby's were not reasonable. That, however, was not the case because Lord Allenby knew from his intelligence intelli-gence every disposition and move ment of the enemy. Every one of hb opponents' cards was known to him and he was consequently able to p his own hand with the most porfec assurance. In those circumstance? victory was certain." However, in the middle of this eulogy of the British military intelll gence Bervice, General MacDonogl. stopped long enough to say a few un kind words, without mentioning names, of Intelligence officers who talked too much. "The public has often been regaled with stories of the British secret service," ser-vice," he said. "That service has one great value to act as a test of reticence reti-cence of those connected with It; and I much regret that many distinguished dis-tinguished men have failed when that test was applied to them. All I intend in-tend to say of the secret service Is that Its essence is secrecy, and the less said about it the better. A Trick That Failed. "During the later part of the ilrst battle of Ypres I received from Lord Kitchener the most circumstantial reports re-ports of the despatch and arrival of German reinforcements on the western west-ern front. Those reports emanited from Amsterdam and created much alarm and despondency In London when Lord Kitchener communicated them to the cabinet without having them first properly verified. "I well remember Mr. Asquith coming com-ing to my office at St. Omer and my telling the prime minister that I fell sure they hod come direct from the German general staff; that their object ob-ject was to conceal the withdrawal of larger masses of German troops from Flanders to Poland ; and I was able to assure Mr. Asquith from Incontrovertible In-controvertible evidence in my possession posses-sion that the battle was practically over." |