My dear Prime Minister,

IMPERIAL AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH CONFERENCE

This week the Imperial Agricultural Conference is meeting daily in
its last series of meetings. Everything is going quite well.

The Empire Marketing Board is seizing the opportunity of having a
series of evening meetings with experts from Overseas to discuss
various research questions and, as a result, my available time
this week is extraordinarily limited.

I am enclosing a cutting from the 'Scotsman' of October 20th
giving a very good report of Lord Balfour's [1] speech on the
occasion of the visit of the Conference to Edinburgh. I was not
able to find time to go up to Scotland with them but I understand
that the dinner was extremely successful. Major Walter Elliot's
[2] speech is also well reported.

AUSTRALIAN TARIFF

On Friday last, the Intelligence Branch at Australia House
referred to me your cable in which your reply to the London
Chamber of Commerce memorandum on the tariff was set out. I went
very carefully through it and made suggestions for the preparation
of an announcement in the press. These were adopted and you will
have received from the Intelligence Branch a whole series of
cuttings because your statement obtained extremely good publicity.

[3] The 'Financial News', the 'Financial Times', the 'Times' and
one or two other papers printed the statement in full and most of
the other papers published it, the 'Daily Chronicle' giving it a
small leading article.

In this connection I am enclosing a copy of a memorandum on the
Australian Tariff and British Trade which I have just prepared for
the Empire Marketing Board. The Board is continually being met
with complaints about the effect of the Australian Tariff and I
was asked to prepare a brief but effective reply.

IRON AND STEEL

I am enclosing two cuttings from the 'Times' of October 25th
giving some interesting light on the position of the British iron
and steel industry. I have particularly marked those portions of
Mr. Peech's [4] speech which are worth your reading. It seems
probable that there will be a very strong revival of the demands
for the safeguarding of British iron and steel heavy industries in
the near future, especially if the rebate system, which was
recently brought into effect, does not serve to check the flood of
foreign imports.

MAJOR WALTER ELLIOT

I am forwarding to you, under separate cover, a copy of Major
Elliot's small book which has just been issued. It is entitled
'Toryism and the Twentieth Century'. I have not yet had time to
read it but I gather from just glancing through its pages that
Elliot has attempted to set out a constructive policy for what he
terms the parties of the Right and to claim for them the principle
of growth or the biological point of view rather than the logical
or mathematical tendencies which he associates with the parties of
the Left.

I feel fairly sure that you will find the book both stimulating
and amusing but I should not be surprised if you consider it a
little too much of a 'tour de force' for a serious contribution to
political science. I propose to write to you more fully about this
book, however, when I have read it.

I am enclosing cuttings from today's 'Morning Post' and the
'Times' reviewing the book.

There seems a possibility that Elliot will be promoted to take the
place of Ronald McNeill [5] as Secretary to the Treasury. This is
the one ministerial promotion that he could receive while still
remaining associated with the Empire Marketing Board. It is,
however, possible that the appointment will go to Arthur Michael
Samuel, the present head of the Department of Overseas Trade.

Personally I very much hope that this will not be the case, as I
regard Samuel as being a quite useless person at least from our
point of view. I have previously told you about A. M. Samuel's
extraordinarily stupid attitude on the subject of the Colonial
Trust Act. [6]

Yours sincerely,
F. L. MCDOUGALL