Frankston

PERSONAL

My dear Casey,

I have now finished my present political career. Latham [1] has
been appointed as my successor and I have replied to the
overwhelming mass of correspondence I received with regard to the
defeat of the Government, and my own reverse. As one of my final
acts before forgetting I ever was a Prime Minister I want to thank
you for the extraordinarily valuable help and assistance you have
given me ever since you went to London. Your work there has been
admirable, and it must be a great gratification to you to realise
that by your own ability and more particularly personality you
have made for yourself a position which enables you to render a
great service to Australia and at the same time have won for
yourself the confidence and esteem of practically every one who
counts in London. It is a great performance, and whether you are
or not, you should be very pleased with yourself for what you have
accomplished. I spent the best part of an hour endeavouring to
convince my successor that in his own interests it was imperative
he should retain your services if you were willing to continue.

How successful I was I do not know. [2]

I am afraid at times you must have felt that I was not
appreciative of all you were doing, owing to your hearing so
seldom from me. It was not a lack of appreciation but of time that
prevented me writing to you more often. Running a Government for a
long period without the assistance of a first class side-to you
now I can admit the side was anything but first-class, although
towards the end of our period it was greatly improved-leaves
little opportunity for dealing as one would wish with individual
matters. Your official letters, however, kept me with a good
working general knowledge of External Affairs, which at times,
both in and out of the House, proved invaluable, and your personal
letters were of the greatest interest, and kept me in touch with
everything that was happening in London. Incidentally, they
constitute a very interesting record of the inner history of
British politics for the last five years.

I cabled you yesterday telling you I was coming to England, and
expressing the hope you would not altogether drop me now that I am
out of office. As I will be seeing you so soon I will then have an
opportunity of thanking you personally for all the help and
assistance you have given me; in the meantime, however, I wanted
to send you a line to say how grateful I am.

With kind regards, and my respects to my God-daughter [3], whom I
am looking forward to seeing-

Yours sincerely
S.M. BRUCE