My dear P.M.,

In the 'Times' of March 15th there appeared an important article
by Seydoux, a well-known Frenchman of great ability, who was in
their Foreign Office and is now connected with one of the big
Paris banks in an important capacity. [1] He writes with great
frankness about the Franco-German rapprochement which he says is
proceeding very rapidly. He points to the Franco-German Commercial
Agreement [2] and shows how it has been followed by commercial
arrangements between many individual industries, which he infers
will end by French and German industry and trade becoming
interlocked as one bloc-and that political understanding between
the two countries will follow. He implies that this tendency is to
the detriment of Great Britain. [3]

His article might well be a contribution to the series of opinions
that I have been gathering on the influence of international
finance and trade on the question of international peace or war.

I send his article with the resulting continental comments in
another letter by this mail, which I think it may interest you to
see.

This is the type of important subject on which one finds that
there is no opinion worth the getting in the Foreign Office. They
appear to regard any injection of financial or commercial
questions into the rarified sphere of international politics as an
attempt at getting oil and water to mix.

If, as Seydoux suggests, Great Britain has missed the opportunity
of taking her 'proper place' in the continental economic system,
and if we have 'allowed' France and Germany to embrace to the
extent that there is no room for us in their entwined arms, then I
think that there is explanation and reason for her action in the
unconscious tendency of British thought to look to the Empire for
her future rather than abroad. Each Imperial Conference has made
it clear to His Majesty's Government that it favours lessened
instead of increased European commitments and entanglements.

Restrained but constant publicity has been given to this desire on
the part of the Empire.

Still, I think Seydoux's article a most interesting and important
one.

I was surprised and interested a few days ago, in conversation
with Hankey [4], when he said that he sometimes had periods of
wondering whether we were well advised in these islands to adopt
the policy of involving ourselves in Europe's troubles to the
extent that we do, rather than an isolationist policy. I could not
get him to say that he thought it was possible for Great Britain
to be isolationist, but he gave one enough to let one suppose that
he would like to see the consequences investigated more fully.

This arose out of my asking him what he thought about Seydoux's
article.

I send by this mail a brief history of the disarmament question in
the last year that I have put together. I have had both Hankey,
the Foreign Office man concerned, and the Director of Plans at the
Admiralty [5] read it, and with minor alterations they agree that
it is a fair picture. It is short and shorn of detail. You may
care to look through it.

The lack of any progress towards limitation of armaments seems to
me to be the most grim tragedy of the post-war period. Events and
tendencies seem to be shaping themselves in such a way that
another conflagration is far from impossible. Nobody wants it but
apparently nobody can stop it.

Nations seem to regard disarmament much in the same way as people
regard going to a dinner party-they don't want to arrive till the
other guests are there too.

Few things distress and irritate me more than a half-hour spent
with the Foreign Office or Admiralty people when I go to ask them
the inside story of what has happened recently at disarmament
negotiations. We try and bargain with the French by agreeing to
support them in their ideas about maintaining land armaments, in
return for their supporting us against America on naval matters.

Sordid and hopeless.

I set myself the unwelcome task in this last ten days of reducing
to a simple running story the history of the two disputes which
have lately been put up to the League Council under Article II of
the Covenant, as threatening 'to disturb international peace'.

These are the Polish-Lithuanian dispute [6] and the Roumanian-
Hungarian dispute. [7]

I have had my rendering of them both checked by the Foreign Office
who made minor alterations to my drafts. I send them both by this
mail. I don't suggest that you should read them as neither dispute
is sufficiently grave to be a potential source of war in the near
future. But if you wanted a little light reading ...

I also submit by this week's mail a contribution to the gaiety of
nations in the shape of a monograph on the negotiations with
Persia. [8]

The extreme necessity for cautious wording of diplomatic documents
is the thing that makes them so tiresome to read and difficult to
absorb. I have to inflict a great deal of cross-examination on the
Foreign Office people and wade through masses of documents to
produce a simple, free-and-easy story of any negotiations that
enables anyone not completely conversant with the subject to grasp
the gist of it all without a headache.

The tendency of all specialists is to introduce a lot of mumbo-
jumbo into the written word. They seem to delight in making
everything appear as difficult and complicated as possible. My
self-appointed job to a great extent is simplification.

In returning a draft to me on one of the subjects that I am
dealing with this week, the man concerned in the Foreign Office
says: 'I have made a few minor alterations and remarks in the
margin. If I may say so, you have produced a simple
straightforward and withal true story of this complicated subject.

I imagine that it is for your official people in Australia. You
will realise that if any "outside" use is to be made of it, it
will have to be covered up in much more cautious language.'
The loss of Gregory [9], Vansittart [10] and O'Malley [11] to the
Foreign Office, and the consequent reshuffling, has left the
Department in my opinion (and in Hankey's, which is more to the
point) in a state of weakness that is more pronounced than at any
time that I remember it. Sir Ronald Lindsay [12] (who is replacing
Tyrrell [13]), I believe, although a very good man in many ways is
said not to be on the level of Sir Eyre Crowe [14] or Sir William
Tyrrell from the point of view of 'brains'. Knowing the
individuals in the Foreign Office as I do, and running one's eye
down the list, there are very few whom one would pick out as
first-rate men.

I send by this mail a brief (one page) summary of the report of
the Anti-Aircraft Research Sub-Committee of the Committee of
Imperial Defence, which will not be of interest to you. An
interesting point, however, came to me in connection with their
work. Probably the most secret part of their researches is in
connection with the development of pilotless aeroplanes controlled
by wireless by 'mother' aeroplanes from the air or by wireless
from the ground. One of the ideas is to use them to ram hostile
air formations. We have developed them to a greater extent than
other nations, mainly by reason of the most secret nature of the
work. When Nungesser [15] attempted to fly from France to America
and was lost, one of these Ram machines (as the pilotless aircaft
are called) got away from its 'mother' and fell in the sea and was
wrecked off Land's End. The remains were found and not unnaturally
were thought to be those of Nungesser's machine, and it took some
ingenuity to cover the business up!

There is a short but important despatch about Japan and China that
you should read amongst the Foreign Office print that I send-by
this mailChina, Section 1 of March 10th.

I have written to Sir Neville Howse [16] by this mail-a general,
personal letter about the External Affairs Department, its life
and times.

I am glad to learn that the Air Board in Australia are apparently
now in favour of His, Majesty's Government asking officially if
Group Captain Freeman [17] may accompany Sir John Salmond on the
Air Mission to Australia. [18] I know Freeman and I know that his
presence would ensure a better done job than his absence. And as
this Air enquiry is an important one for Australia, I think it is
a pity to spoil the ship for a little tar, or, to modernise and
make more apropos the simile-to spoil the aeroplane for a little
dope.

I am, Yours sincerely,
R.C. CASEY