During the First World War he was engaged in combating the Hindu–German Conspiracy. During this period he employed the novelist W. Somerset Maugham as an intelligence agent in Geneva. Wallinger is perhaps best known as the principal inspiration for the character of "R.", the fictional British spymaster who employs Ashenden in Maugham's stories.
In 1902, during a period of concern over the activities of Indian nationalist political activists, Wallinger was seconded to the Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard. This was the first of his activities in countering Indian anti-colonial activists in Europe, before returning to India in 1904.[2] He gained a reputation in intelligence circles as "a brave officer with a talent for acquiring local native dialects and a flair for undercover criminal intelligence operations when he would ‘black up’".[2]
In 1910 he returned to England with the rank of superintendent to lead the newly-established Indian Political Intelligence Office. This was a substantial organisation and role, reflecting the concerns the British government had regarding anti-colonial political activists, described by historian Richard Popplewell as "not much smaller than the European intelligence operations of the Secret Service Bureau, let alone those of the War Office".[3] He was awarded the King's Police Medal in the 1914 New Year Honours.[4]
He was highly decorated for his intelligence work: on 14 January 1916 he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order, and in the 1918 New Year Honours he was made a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire.[5][7] After the war, on 3 June 1925, he was awarded a KBE.[8] In 1926 he was offered the role of deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, but instead chose to retire to Brighton on the south coast of England, where he died on 7 January 1931.[2]
Literary and cultural influence
Among Wallinger's more famous agents was Somerset Maugham, whom he recruited in London and sent as a secret agent to Switzerland.[9][10] Wallinger was the literary prototype of the spymaster of a number of Maugham's short stories, and was notably portrayed as the spymaster "R." in the Ashenden stories Maugham wrote following the war.
^Popplewell 1995, p. 216: "with the outbreak of the First World War the Indian intelligence network set up by Superintendent Wallinger ... within the general structure of British intelligence in Europe ... In scale it was not much smaller than the European intelligence operations of the Secret Service Bureau, let alone those of the War Office."