Your telegram 222. [1]

Following from Lord Cranborne:-

'Personal for Doctor Evatt.

Many thanks for your personal telegram to me. I am grateful for
your frank views. Our telegram 325 [2] was, in fact, submitted by
me to the War Cabinet and its terms were approved by them, but I
have again studied it in the light of what you say. During the
time that I have been at the Dominions Office we have often
received very frank telegrams from the Australian Government, and
I have always appreciated these, as to my mind, frankness is the
necessary basis of close and cordial collaboration. Similarly, in
the present case, we felt it was essential to let you know the
difficulties in which, having regard to our own world-wide
colonial responsibilities, we had been placed by the statement on
colonial policy [3] published on the conclusion of the Wellington
Conference. There is, of course, no question as to the right of
any Governments of the Commonwealth concerned to publish their
views. But it is, I suggest, important that, in particular with
regard to questions affecting them all, there should, where
possible, be prior consultation with a view to resolving any
difference of view. For, if without such prior consultation, all
the members of the British Commonwealth were to adopt the practice
of making unilateral declarations on matters of common interest to
the whole Commonwealth, especially in the international sphere, I
cannot but think our joint influence for good would inevitably be
weakened. In this particular case, in our opinion, such prior
consultation would surely have avoided a great deal of
embarrassment now and in the future. Our views were already known
to you and we feel that before you published an opposing view it
would have been helpful if you had given us a further opportunity
of trying to reconcile our differences. Not to have explained this
frankly would, I think, have been fair neither to you nor to us.

Actually I think the exchange of telegrams has clone good and
cleared the air. It now appears that the difference between us may
be less wide than your published statement seemed to us to imply.

We shall be telegraphing to you about this officially.

CRANBORNE