My dear P.M.,

I had an interesting talk at lunch yesterday to Colonel Piggott
[1], who was Military Attache at Tokyo until a year ago and is now
the second man in Military Intelligence at the War Office. He
repeats what I have so often been told before, that the best
opinion that exists on paper in brief form about the position and
aspirations of Japan is contained in Sir Charles Eliot's
'farewell' despatch from Tokyo of January 1926. [2]

If you have time to look at it in your infrequent leisure,
Henderson [3] has several copies in the External Affairs
Department. It is Foreign Office print Section 3 (Japan) of March
19th, 1926. You need read only pages 6 and 7, and 14 to 17-these
contain the useful generalisations-the remainder is too detailed.

Piggott knows the Far East very well, speaks Japanese and is one
of the people with first-hand knowledge. He deplores the loss of
the Anglo-Japanese Treaty and is one of those who think that, even
if it cannot be revived, we should replace it with an unwritten
entente with Japan, similar to our entente with France in the pre-
war decade.

Captain Egerton (Director of Plans, Admiralty) always talks in
this same tone. They regret the fact that our policy of appeasing
the United States led us to break with Japan. The Pacific 'Four
Power Pact' [4] is considered a poor and pale substitute for the
Anglo-Japanese alliance. The Dominions are given the credit for
having swayed H.M.G.'s policy towards the break with Japan, but,
actually, Canada alone was for the break (owing to her United
States complex), New Zealand being strongly for retaining the
alliance, Australia also for the same policy and South Africa more
or less indifferent.

Australia for some curious reason is nearly always saddled in
people's minds with the responsibility for the break with Japan,
but it was, of course, Canada and not us at all.

However, now that the step has been so irrevocably taken and
H.M.G. are apparently so completely committed to a policy of not
offending America in the smallest degree-it would not seem
possible to make any friendly gesture towards Japan without
arousing the immediate suspicions of the United States.

The American Department of the Foreign Office are getting some
entertainment out of the fact that the Americans are being drawn
into the use of force in Nicaragua [5]-combined with the fact that
the Pan-American Conference at Havana [6] this year is to be made
the occasion by the Americans of an attempt to eliminate the
suspicion in the minds of Latin America that the United States are
prone to bully them.

Will Rogers-one of America's few real humourists-has been in
Mexico lately as the guest of Dwight Morrow, the new American
Ambassador to Mexico, and he (Will Rogers) has made some
characteristically laconic comments on the situation. He said that
some real point had recently been given to the old saying 'Ask the
Marines'-if you wanted to know how any Central American political
elections were getting on, you had only to ask the American
Marines who had the situation in hand. 'It's a wonderful good
idea', said Will Rogers, 'this sending American marines to
guarantee the purity of Central American elections. The only
trouble is that we haven't enough enlisted marines in the States
to guarantee the purity of our own elections.'

Will Rogers has been used as part of the stock in trade of Dwight
Morrow in his spectacular bettering of United States-Mexican
relations. Calles (President of Mexico), Morrow and Will Rogers
have been on a tour of inspection together-Will Rogers to create
bonhomie and Dwight Morrow to capitalise on it.

Vansittart [7] draws a good parallel between the Mexico-United
States position and a fable of La Fontaine-'The Sun and the Wind'.

A man was once walking along a road with a big coat tightly drawn
round himself. The sun and the wind had a wager as to who could
induce the man to take his coat off. The wind started and tried by
blowing harder to win his point, but the harder the wind blew the
tighter the man drew his coat round him. Then the sun started to
shine and, as it grew hotter, the man eventually flung off his
coat!

Sheffield, the late United States Ambassador to Mexico, tried to
win his point with Mexico by strong arm methods-Morrow by good
fellowship and the radiance of his smile.

Dwight Morrow, by the way, was the legal partner in J.P. Morgan's
of Wall Street until he was induced by the President to take this
diplomatic appointment.

A memorandum by the War Office that I send you this week indicates
that they think that Soviet Russia is making efforts to perfect
her war organisation. 'Russian military policy is for the moment
defensive, but the present mental attitude of the Soviet
Government is such that it may precipitate a war which, so far as
the British Empire is concerned, cannot be elsewhere than in
Central Asia.'

The Foreign Office consider that the War Office are scaremongers
with regard to Russia and that this and their several previous
memoranda in the last two years on this subject are too highly
coloured. The War Office are always (probably rightly) trying to
discover an 'objective' to account for every country's military
preparations. One is reminded of the fact that foreigners affect
to think that the British Navy is directed against Japan, our Air
Force against France and our Army against Russia!
It is a little galling to H.M.G. that Canada has invited the
President of the United States [8] to visit Ottawa, without any
reference to the British Government at all. The first the
Dominions Office knew of it was from the Press. The visit of the
United States President anywhere is an event of importance.

This came just at the moment when the new Canadian Conservative
leader [9] made the remarks about whether the economic future of
Canada lay within or without the Empire-see 'Daily Mail' cutting
attached. [10]

The Australian press people in London have been sitting on my
doorstep trying to get some indication of the personnel of the Big
Four [11], but so far I have found myself able to withstand them.

A favourite cliche of the Australian Press Association is that
such and such an opinion is held in 'Diplomatic circles in
London'. I am getting my wife to do a cartoon with this title
showing Sir Austen [12] with a large eyeglass, Bill Bentinck [13]
with large round horn-rimmed spectacles, both against a background
of Wellesley [14]-who is almost completely circular.

You know that all diplomatic posts abroad are in the habit of
reporting to their home Foreign Offices on the character, ability
and habits of their foreign colleagues. It has become known that
the French Embassy at Madrid in reporting on Sir Horace Rumbold,
the British Ambassador, started the report-'Malgre son air
idiot...'!

If you happen by chance to have read a book called 'The Great
Delusion' by Neon, which was published about a year ago, you may
be interested to know that I hear confidentially that it was by a
Mrs. Acworth, who has a brother-in-law in the Admiralty who is
suspected (by the Air people) of having loaded her gun. It was, as
you may remember, a violent attack on the Air Service and an
implied boost for the Admiralty. It created considerable stir at
the time. [15]

I have written another letter to you by this mail about Aden. It
has been transferred from the administration of the Bombay
Presidency to that of the Colonial Office, and responsibility for
the defence of the port has been transferred from the War Office
to the Air Ministry. This is the first port that Sir Hugh
Trenchard [16] has managed to get into his clutches and he is very
jubilant about it.

Belligerent rights at sea. As I have written in another letter,
the C.I.D. meeting yesterday on this subject took an unexpected
turn. I don't know what has gone on between Chamberlain and
Tyrrell [17] in the last few weeks, but the Foreign Office has
apparently quite changed its mind. I really think that it has been
Hankey's [18] influence that has swung the affair round.

Chamberlain came out with the statement that 'the economic weapon
was essential in an unlimited war' and that he would have nothing
to do with Freedom of the Seas.

The King has been most active in the matter and has had half the
Cabinet come to see him individually on the subject, and talked to
Hankey for an hour about it. He was, I believe, most vehement, and
said that whatever they did they would not get him willingly to
agree to giving up our rights at sea. He realised that
constitutionally he had to take their advice but that if it came
to the point, he would do so with the greatest unwillingness. No
doubt this has had some influence on the attitude of Ministers.

Both Hankey and the Prime Minister [19] are most relieved by the
smooth turn things have taken.

Yours sincerely,
R. G. CASEY