David Petrie - Work in India

Work in India

After his convalescence Petrie returned to India in 1915; at this stage the DCI was concerned about contact between Indian nationalist rebels and German intelligence agents in neutral Siam. Petrie was attached to the British legation in Bangkok for six months from August 1915 as an intelligence officer. His reports convinced the government of India that it needed its own overseas intelligence network to counter the local intelligence threat and ordered Petrie to set one up. He recruited agents during a tour of Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, Hong Kong, China, and Japan, and directed their operations from August 1916 to November 1919, while ostensibly vice-consul in Shanghai. He was honoured with the CIE (1915), OBE (1918), and CBE (1919).

Petrie was offered the directorship of the DCI in 1919, but turned this down on the grounds of exhaustion. In 1920 he married Edris Naida (d. 1945), daughter of W. Henry Elliston Warrall, a sea captain; there were no children. In 1921-2, he escorted the Duke of Connaught and the Prince of Wales during their visits to India and worked again in the Punjab in 1923 as senior superintendent of police in Lahore. As a member of the royal commission on the public services in India (1923–4), he pondered the rate at which Indian personnel should be admitted to the higher echelons.

In 1924, when Cecil Kaye, the Director of the DCI retired, Petrie this time consented to become director, renamed it as the Intelligence Bureau of the home department of the government of India. It co-ordinated the efforts of provincial police forces to combat terrorism and communal violence and used informers to monitor the activity of the non-co-operation movement. Attempts by M. N. Roy to establish communist cells were comprehensively thwarted, for which Petrie received much credit. Knighted in June 1929, he left the intelligence bureau in 1931 to become first a member and then chairman (1932–6) of the Indian public services commission. He also chaired the Indian Red Cross Society.

On his retirement from Indian service in 1936 Petrie spent some time in East Africa and the Levant. He assisted his old friend and colleague Sir Charles Tegart in reporting on reorganization of the Palestine police (December 1937–January 1938) before settling in Britain. His career appeared to be at an end until he was commissioned into the Intelligence Corps and posted to Cairo in May 1940 as a result of World War II. Six months later he was recalled to London and asked to become director-general of the Security Service (still commonly known as MI5, its designation prior to 1931). Petrie hesitated to accept.