I am sorry to have been so long in answering your letter of 16th
September about Co-operation in Commonwealth Defence. We have been
thinking very carefully over the points you raised.

2. I am glad that you agree that there should be a United Kingdom
Liaison Staff in Australia, consisting of a Chief Liaison Officer
with a junior colleague from each of the other two Services. Thank
you also for your assurance that you will give them all
facilities. Our intention is that the Liaison Staff shall be made
up as follows:

Naval Representatives-
Rear-Admiral (Chief Liaison Officer);

Captain, R.N;

Army Representatives-
Colonel;

Major;

R.A.F. Representatives-
Air Commodore;

1 more Junior Officer;

Secretariat-
1 Staff Officer;

and that its composition should be reviewed after 12 months. The
post of Chief Liaison Officer will be filled by the Senior
Representatives of the three Services in rotation, starting with
the senior Naval Liaison Officer. The number of United Kingdom
Service Representatives in Australia has already been reduced by
58, and I think that as soon as the J.C.O.S.A. has been disbanded
and our new Liaison Staff appointed, all the points which you made
in your letter of the 22nd July [1] will have been met. I am as
anxious as you that there should be no extravagance in our Service
representation in Australia, and I hope therefore that J.C.O.S.A.

may be disbanded very soon.

After J.C.O.S.A. has been abolished, there may still be a few
administrative duties to be done by United Kingdom Service
Officers in Australia. These duties (which will be entirely
domestic and will not detract from the complete responsibility of
the Australian Government for B.C.O.F.) may last until the United
Kingdom contingent is finally withdrawn from B.C.O.F. We may
therefore need, in addition to the staff mentioned in paragraph 2,
an Army Major and Staff Captain and possibly one junior Staff
Officer from the Royal Navy and two from the Royal Air Force to
perform these administrative duties. Our Service Representatives
in Australia have been told, however, that the Liaison Staff must
be kept as small as possible, and they have -also been told to
agree upon plans for the transfer to the Australian Government of
all responsibility for B.C.O.F., so that when J.C.O.S.A. is
formally abolished, the hand-over can be made smoothly and
rapidly.

4. I quite agree with what you say in paragraph 12, that it is
important that there should be a clear definition of the
individual responsibilities of the three Senior Service Liaison
Officers in their capacity as United Kingdom Service
representatives to the Australian Service Departments, as well as
of their responsibilities as accredited representatives to the
Australian Defence Department. I think you will agree that this
distinction and the relation between them and the Chief Liaison
Officer are made clear in the attached directives [2] which we
propose to issue to them, and upon which I should be glad to
receive your comments.

5. I welcome the proposal made in your letter of the 28th May and
mentioned again in paragraph 12 of your letter of the 16th
September, that our High Commissioner and the Chief Liaison
Officer should attend meetings of your Council of Defence when
matters affecting the United Kingdom are under consideration. I
agree that your High Commissioner should similarly be invited to
meetings of our Defence Committee when matters of concern to
Australia are under consideration, and that your Defence
Representative should accompany him on these occasions as an
adviser. [3] Your representatives will probably have to attend
meetings of our Defence Committee less frequently than our
representatives will have to attend your Council of Defence, since
under the new arrangements Australia will take the initiative in
considering the defence of the Pacific, and such matters will
comparatively seldom come on the agenda of our Defence Committee
which, as you know, is an executive organ of the United Kingdom
Cabinet concerned with a great mass of domestic business. I am
also willing that the Australian Defence Representative in London
should attend meetings of the United Kingdom Chiefs of Staff
Committee when matters of concern to Australia are under
discussion.

6. Thank you for giving me an opportunity of seeing the exchange
of letters between yourself and the Prime Minister of New Zealand
about the machinery for co-operation between Australia and New
Zealand. I am very glad to learn that you have reached a
satisfactory agreement.

7. Perhaps I might take this opportunity of mentioning again the
question of the defence of vital sea communications, to which you
refer in paragraph 14(c) of your letter of 16th September. As you
say, the machinery now agreed upon provides a means of examining
this, and I hope that we can soon have an examination made. The
question will be affected by our decision to accelerate the run
down of the United Kingdom Services (about which I have
telegraphed to you separately), and it is therefore important that
we should consider the matter very soon.

8. As you point out in paragraph 15 of your letter, the Defence
Co-ordination Committee, Far East, is part of the United Kingdom
Defence machinery and responsible to it. Nevertheless, it is
important that Australia and New Zealand should have liaison on an
official level with that body. I have seen your letter to the
United Kingdom High Commissioner of the 6th January, from which I
take it that you agree in principle that liaison could be achieved
by the attendance of the Australian Commissioner in Malaya as an
observer at certain meetings of the Committee. I understand that
this has been the practice in the past and I hope that it can be
continued.

9. I entirely agree with all that you say about the retention by
each Government of the Commonwealth of the right to decide its own
Defence commitments, and I am glad that this correspondence has
afforded an opportunity to reaffirm this, and to resolve any
confusion there may have been as to the way in which we should
cooperate in the future. Please write to me again if you feel that
there is any way in which our co-operation in matters of Defence
can be improved.