My dear P.M.,

There have been no further stirrings of mind on the blockade
question [1] in the F.O. or elsewhere. No more official memoranda
have been written. I send one or two press cuttings in this
connection.

I have been to see the Director of Plans at the Admiralty [2] on
the subject. They are shocked and stunned at the attack on their
sacred preserves by the Foreign Office. Rear-Admiral A. D. P. R.

Pound, Assistant Chief of Naval Staff, is collaborating with
Admiral Field [3] in the marshalling of their arguments and the
preparation of their case on paper for the C.I.D. Committee. The
Admiralty seem to be a little ponderous on paper and in this case
they seem hardly to know where to begin. Their memorandum I do not
expect for a fortnight, but that it will be strongly worded when
it does appear, I have no doubt.

The fight, of course, will be a straightforward one between the
Admiralty and the F.O., with Hankey [4] on the Admiralty's side.

You will know the story of the five men of different nationalities
who went big game shooting and who, on their return, were asked to
write articles on the subject. The Englishman wrote on 'Elephant
Shooting', the Frenchman 'L'elephant et ses amours', the German
'Technical treatise on the life cycle of the larger pachyderms',
the Pole 'The Elephant in its relation to the Polish Corridor',
and the American 'Bigger and Better Elephants'.

Well, Vansittart [5] says the Big Navy people in the U.S. always
remind him of this story-with their slogan 'A bigger and better
Navy'.

Now that I have revived one old story, I'll try another which I am
sure you will have heard and forgotten. It was credited originally
to a prominent Frenchman:-

Je connais le monde,
Je connais le beau monde,
Je connais le demi monde,
Mais jamais n'ai-je connu quelqu'un de
si immonde
Que Sir Alfred Mond. [6]

Admiral Field goes to the Mediterranean as Commander-in-Chief in
about April. Admiral Sir Charles E. Madden, who succeeded Beatty
[7] as First Lord of the Admiralty, is, I hear on good authority,
not a really worthy successor to Beatty. He is much pleasanter to
deal with but much less able.

I am told on very good authority that Sir Hugh Trenchard [8] is to
retire in a year or eighteen months' time. His successor will
probably be from amongst Air Marshal Sir John Salmond [9], Air
Vice-Marshal Sir Edward L. Ellington [10], Air Vice-Marshal Sir P.

W. Game [11], and Air Vice-Marshal Sir W. Geoffrey H. Salmond
[12], in that order of probability. [13]

I hear that the real thing in oil has been discovered in Iraq. So
Amery [14] is justified at last in his stand on the Iraq question
which so incensed the cheap press 18 months ago. [15]

The question of the financial allowances to delegates to League of
Nations and other international assemblies at Geneva and elsewhere
is one that I think wants looking into. It has become the custom
to pay all their travelling and hotel expenses and to give them in
addition 3.3s.0d. per day for other unspecified out-of-pocket
expenses which need not be accounted for. This does not apply to
civil servants like myself, who get from 1 to 1.11s.6d. per day
over and above travelling and hotel expenses. I should become
extremely unpopular with a number of people if it were known that
I was raising this point, but I know from personal experience that
this three guineas a day represents almost entirely clear profit
to almost all our delegates, and is very much more than similar
allowances by other Dominions.

If you think that this small economy is worth taking up, I
consider that you could well make a rule that the flat rate for
all delegates is to be one and a half guineas a day plus
reasonable travelling and hotel living expenses, and that the
latter is not to include wine or cigars.

The rate for civil servants might well be standardised at 1 a day
plus living expenses.

I understand that the Government are counting on getting a good
deal of kudos throughout the country from the functioning of the
Widows,

Orphans and Old Age Contributory Pensions Act, which was passed in
1925 and which comes into operation in this New Year. By its terms
every insured person has the right to an old age pension at 65.

The 'Times' estimates that 450,000 people will be entitled to draw
the weekly pension. It is claimed for the new scheme that it will
enable some of the older men to withdraw from industry and let
younger men in, from the ranks of the unemployed, and so
indirectly decrease unemployment. The more carnally minded of the
Conservatives are placing some reliance on the fact that this
scheme will have been in operation for a year or two when the next
election comes about, and are counting on its being placed to
their credit in the country.

The influence of personality in diplomacy is most strikingly shewn
in the astounding change that has come over American-Mexican
relations since Dwight Morrow went to Mexico as U.S. Ambassador. I
am told that he is far from being a profound or world-shaking
diplomat, but he has human qualities, tact and the ordinary bread
and butter virtues, and is what they call 'simpatico'. The Mexican
intransigence and sullen antagonism to the U.S. fell down like a
house of cards within a few weeks and has been replaced by an era
of loving kindness and sweet reasonableness-which Morrow is
capitalising on.

Tom Jones [16] spent Christmas with the Astors (Lord Astor [17])
in the country. Bernard Shaw [18] was one of a numerous party and
T.J. came back very delighted with his talks with him. He says
that for conversational brilliance he puts him with Winston
Churchill [19] and Tim Healy [20], which is supposed to be very
high indeed. He is over 70, very tall and straight, and with white
hair and beard. Bernard Shaw is a great friend of Colonel Lawrence
[21] (of Arabia), who has now taken the name of Shaw while he is a
private soldier in the Air Force. Shaw sent him a book for
Christmas 'from Public Shaw to Private Shaw'. Bernard Shaw told
T.J. that King Feisal of Iraq had told him, when he was in London
recently, that he was anxious to get Lawrence as his political
adviser in Iraq, but that he had been advised that his peculiar
attitude towards everything since the war made it inadvisable.

The 'Big Four' seem to be well chosen. [22] I have heard it said
that their expressed desire to go as a team or not at all lies in
the fact that they regard themselves as British industry and that
if one of their number stayed behind, the others are afraid that
he would scoop the till! Beharrel [23] I hear spoken of as the
real brains of the four.

I am, Yours sincerely,
R. G. CASEY