We must take time to save time. The SGSD is of course the Scouts, Guides, Spies and Detectives. Their records were kept by the Provost Marshal General’s Office. They had the files of all the correspondence, records, accounts and related records of the military scouts, as well as the guides. In addition there were masses of reports from the spies and detectives. There was an awful lot of paper, let me tell you. When we started to sort things out we found that in many cases reports never reached us, or efforts were duplicated since there was no overall control. That is why we organized the BMI. The Bureau of Military Information. It is our aim to gather all of the intelligence-gathering services under this one roof. All reports, of any kind, will end up here in Room 313. These will be gathered into a single report every night — and a copy of this report will be on your desk every morning.”

“An ambitious idea and a very original one. Do you think that you can do it? As I remember it, there is absolutely no one in the military who likes anyone else looking over his shoulder.”

“You are right of course — it is not easily done. Too many people in the field are used to keeping information to themselves. Commanding generals in particular. Pardon my saying so but they are an ornery lot who are very much used to making decisions on their own. But we are building a powerful weapon to convince them differently.”

“Indeed?”

“We will also be making relevant abstracts from the daily report. These will be wired daily in code to an intelligence officer on their staff. When they begin to see information relating to their individual commands, they should allow reports to move in the opposite direction.”

“I wish you all the luck in the world, my boy. But, as you said — they are an ornery lot.”

“Thank you. We can but try. At the present time only the very upper echelon officers know of our existence — and we mean to keep it that way. To everyone else we are, well, just Room 313.”