(Due to arrive Melbourne-20.3.26)

My dear P.M.,

Your telegram asking urgently for the date of Sir George
Buchanan's [1] expulsion from the Institute of Civil Engineers
arrived at 2 p.m. on Saturday last. I spent till 8 p.m. trying all
conceivable means of getting the information -but failed
completely. It was a fine weekend-and you know the habits of
people in this country in fine weekends. I had got and checked the
original story from a man in the India Office, another in the
Office of the Crown Agents for the Colonies, and another who is a
member of a leading firm of engineers. They were all three
impossible to get hold of in the weekend. I tried a dozen other
sources, including one that seldom fails-the Intelligence
Department of the 'Times'. It appears that the matter was hushed
up at the time and did not get into the Press. I had reluctantly
to cable you on Saturday night that I couldn't get the information
till Monday. [2]

However, the incident had its useful side as it threw me in touch
with a man called Maundy Gregory [3], who promises to be most
useful. He is nominally the Editor of a monthly periodical called
'The Whitehall Gazette', but is really a sort of subterranean
Government Intelligence Agent, whose job is to know all about
everybody and who carries out investigations of a confidential
nature for the Government. I was personally introduced to him by
Lord Southborough [4], who vouched for our respective
respectability. I intend to cultivate him as he will be a good
spare string to have to one's bow.

Lord Southborough is, I think, a first-class person. What the
Americans call a 'hand-made' as opposed to a hereditary peer. Was
Sir Francis Hopwood until 1917. A Civil Servant who has come right
up to the top. I met him first at Lady Northcote's [5] house. She
has, by the way, been particularly good to me and has provided
means of my meeting a lot of people.

2. The bulk of the daily press and the weekly reviews (Spectator,
New Statesman and the Nation) have come out with strong articles
condemning Mussolini's Tyrol speech in the course of this last
week. [6] As one of them says, the incident is an index of what he
thinks of the Locarno spirit.

The press generally are also waking up to the many dangers
inherent in the prospective enlarging of the League Council. The
negotiations and intrigue in this direction are a good example of
the back-scratching that goes on in the League. Everyone is afraid
of hurting someone else's feelings in case it will prejudice his
own lively sense of favours to come. Too many soft words and not
enough common sense.

3. Whether or not you decide to attend the September Assembly at
Geneva yourself, it would seem to me no less than essential that
you try to ensure that at least as many as possible of the
Dominion delegations are housed in the same hotel as the British
Delegation. It is a simple measure making for ease of
collaboration, which, if neglected, makes the exchange and co-
ordination of views a burden. Last September was a nightmare in
this connection as we were at the Metropole on one side of the
Lake, and the British delegation were at the Beau Rivage on the
other side. If you think well of it, it would be well worth
telegraphing to Sir Joseph Cook [7] to make the necessary
reservations at once in the same hotel as the British delegation.

4. One important result of the Colwyn Economy Committee's [8]
recommendations was implemented at a full meeting of the C.I.D.

last week, when the rate of accumulation of oil reserves by the
Navy for the next two years was very materially reduced. The
Admiralty have been proceeding on a programme which would have
meant the building up within 10 or 12 years of a full 12-months'
supply for the Navy in active naval warfare' Of course, Beatty [9]
and Bridgeman [10] had their disagreement with this reduction
placed on record.

5. The Prime Minister [11] is at the moment attempting to put into
effect the advice of the Colwyn Committee as regards economies in
the Air Force. With regard to the constant struggle and friction
between the Admiralty and the Air Ministry, for control of the
Naval Air Arm, he is trying to strike a bargain between the two on
the basis of which they will be asked to sink their differences
and get along together in some degree of harmony.

6. Cavan [12] has resigned (by effluxion of time) from being Chief
of the Imperial General Staff and is replaced by Sir George Milne
[13], who Hankey [14] says seems a first-rate man for the job.

7. I am arranging to be supplied daily from the F.O. with copies
of the British Official Wireless messages, in order to see what
Australia is receiving. It has been indicated to me that if there
is any particular incident or item of information that I want
included, it will be 'sympathetically considered'.

8. You may be interested to see from a letter which I send by this
mail that Guido Baracchi [15] has resigned from the Communist
Party of Australia-the reason given being its utter futility as a
party. This seems to add point to the other indications that the
Communists are not very happy in Australia. However, you have
enough other trouble-making elements in the population (especially
in Queensland), not to throw up your hat at this evidence of the
slow demise of one of them.

9. One thing that I think I have learnt in London is how
impossible it is for Dominions to keep in touch with the history
and progress and underlying reasons for British Foreign Policy by
relying solely on day-to-day telegraphic summaries and a few
weekly despatches. Increasing the volume of telegrams and
despatches makes the position a little clearer to them but cannot
completely elucidate it, even if carried to extremes. You must
have someone who can climb the F.O. stairs and talk to the man
concerned, and who can send out to his Dominion as full and
indiscreet a story as he pleases. And you must have at least a
small organisation in the Dominion to file and closely follow what
he sends.

I sometimes wonder whether they are not poulticing a broken leg by
increasing the volume of cabled matter. A Dominion P.M. who is
rather bored with remote Foreign Affairs may think he has the
whole story when he has his file of F.O. telegrams. Information
that is practically forced upon you is liable not to be
appreciated.

I do not for a moment suggest this as a considered opinion-but
what would be the effect of H.M.G. altering their procedure,
ceasing to telegraph the Dominions on Foreign Affairs, and,
instead, make the whole story available to Dominion
representatives on personal application at the F.O.?
It would mean creating a coordinating Department at the F.O. with
a staff to whom Dominion representatives would apply instead of
their going to individual Departments. They might even prepare
daily bulletins to issue to Dominion representatives as a
groundwork for their information and on which they could enlarge
by conversation and the production of copies of actual detailed
documents if required.

It would shift the burden of responsibility from H.M.G. to the
Dominions, who would have to come into line and send a responsible
person here if they wanted to keep in touch at all.

The only telegrams on Foreign Affairs that H.M.G. would then send
would be queries as to Dominion opinions and suggestions.

10. Apart from thrashing out the means of improving communication
and consultation, I don't see how you are going to take any steps
to ensure this Diplomatic Unity of the Empire that is so much
discussed and so little achieved.

11. Hankey was very pleased to get your personal note from
Frankston last week.

12. What is probably a synthetic story of Coolidge. [16] He had
been to Church without his wife. When he came back, she asked him
what the sermon was about. He said 'Sin'. She asked him what the
clergyman had to say about it. 'He was against it'.

13. The exclusion of Vera, Lady Cathcart [17] from U.S. has
intrigued London, conveniently filled the press at a slack time,
and made a good deal of work for the American Department of the
F.O.

There are two theories. Firstly, that the Bradley-Martins (very
wealthy New York people and relations of Lord Craven [18]) with
whom Craven was staying, wanted to keep Lady Cathcart away from
Craven with whom she had had a liaison, and 'managed' that the
migration authorities should use the letter and not the spirit of
the law. If this is so, it signally failed, as the eventual result
was that Craven was obliged to deport himself. The other theory is
that the immigration people carried out the law literally in order
to show up its inherent stupidity. All the best dinner tables were
divided between the two theories.

If this 'expose' has done nothing else, it has given the world the
phrase 'moral turps', for which one should be grateful!

I am, Yours sincerely,
R. G. CASEY

[Handwritten postscript]

I enclose extract from Cabinet Minutes of 18/2/26-dealing with
additional seats on the League Council-for your personal
information. [19]