The Spy Who Painted The Queen (2015) - Plot & Excerpts
The monitoring of telegrams and letters, as advocated by the anonymous Times correspondent, began as soon as the war started. During the Boer War there had been extensive interception of telegrams round the world, and though the organisation responsible for this had been wound up, the necessary machinery still existed to restart it. Cable censorship began immediately, as the War Office had a plan and officers in place to carry out the work. The British had realised at the start of the war that control of information was going to be vital. Their first act of the war was to signal the Post Office cable ship Alert, standing by off the German coast, to grapple, cut and reel up the German transatlantic cables, thus forcing the Germans to use neutral cables, which ran through London and could be intercepted. Among the countries that had no cable system of their own was Holland, which was obliged to use the British-controlled lines, as were the other neutral countries in northern Europe. The elimination of key radio transmitters such as the German one in Togoland also helped force the Germans to use neutral cables or their own powerful transmitters in Germany, which could, of course, be picked up by anyone who knew the frequency.
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