My dear Prime Minister,

It was with the very greatest pleasure that I received and read
your very long letter of the 27th August. [1] It was extremely
good of you to give so much time to replying to my series of
letters and to let me have such full comment on a number of
matters.

You started by referring to my little illness and were good enough
to give me very sound advice as regards the importance of rest. I
am perfectly sure that you do not follow your own advice to any
appreciable extent. I know, however, that one ought to see that
one gets sufficient rest to enable one to bring a fresh mind to
problems.

Please understand quite definitely that I shall not become
discouraged even when I do not hear from you in reply to my
letters. It is, of course, very much more pleasant to receive
replies but I think I completely understand how tremendously
pressed you are. It is kind of you to tell me that you continue to
find my letters interesting and occasionally helpful.

As your letter deals with replies to communications from me
covering the period 3rd May to 18th July, it is unnecessary for me
to answer the greater part of your letter in detail.

I have most carefully studied your comments on the economic
activities of the League of Nations and am very glad that on the
whole you have approved of the line of country which I felt it
expedient to take. [2] The more I think about it, the clearer I am
that it is desirable for us to co-operate in certain directions in
order that we may be in the strongest possible position to
exercise a controlling influence on the whole question of what the
League is to do in the economic field. Only today I have further
evidence of the usefulness of this point of view. The Deputy
Editor of the 'Times' [3], who, at the present moment, is in
charge of the paper, was in touch with me today about the coming
General Assembly of the International Institute at Rome and, in
the course of our talk, he said that he had been told that my
putting forward at the meeting of the Consultative Committee the
dangers of precipitating action in the matter of tariffs had had a
marked and so far lasting effect.

Major Fuhrman [4], who has just returned from Geneva, has given me
one very interesting piece of information. Apparently Senator
McLachlan [5], in speaking in the Assembly, adhered fairly closely
to the speech which I had forwarded to him. The only two countries
that definitely supported the point of view which he put forward
were-according to Major Fuhrman-South Africa and Ireland. I am
drawing your attention to this fact because it appears to me to
illustrate, in a very striking way, the point which I referred to
in my last letter [6] to you when I suggested that Geneva might be
used as a means for cementing the Empire rather than the reverse.

Naturally your comments on the Report of your Tariff Committee
were of special interest to me and I shall keenly await the
receipt of the revised report which Brigden [7] has prepared.

Should it happen that, through some oversight, a copy of Brigden's
revise has not been forwarded to me by the time you receive this
letter, I should be extremely glad if you will see that I do
receive a copy. I will certainly go through it most carefully and
let you have my considered comments in the same way as I did with
the first edition of the report. [8]

With reference to your remarks about the development of economic
research in Australia [9], I propose to write to you more fully on
this subject and will try to send you a letter covering the whole
of my views to reach you about a week after the conclusion of the
General Election.

Your letter touches on the subject of the British Mission. I am
afraid that the strike [10] followed by the General Election will
make their job particularly difficult. I imagine that you will
have little time to see them or to discuss things with them until
after November 17th. However I suppose Gepp [11] and his
colleagues will be in no way affected by the Election campaign and
they will undertake the education of the men so that, as soon as
the Election is over, you will be able to get down to discussions
with men who will, by that time, have become fairly well
acquainted with the problems that they have to face.

I should, naturally, be extremely interested to receive some
comments from you on your reactions to the Business Mission after
you have had an opportunity of going into matters with them. There
is one thing which I feel you should have in mind. Arthur Duckham
[12] is very distinctly 'persona grata' with Winston Churchill
[13] and I hope that if Duckham comes back from Australia
profoundly impressed with the importance to Great Britain of the
development of the Empire, he may be able to do something to
induce Winston Churchill to realise that backing of large scale
Empire development schemes is not only sound from the point of
view of British trade and industry but also politically wise from
Churchill's own personal point of view. There can be no doubt that
Winston Churchill is a very ambitious man who desires above
everything else to be Prime Minister. So long as the bulk of the
Tory Party feel that Churchill is not a man who can safely be
trusted on Imperial affairs, just so long it is impossible to
imagine that they will agree to his becoming Prime Minister. If,
however, Churchill showed a real change of heart and 'brought
forth fruits meet for repentance'-in other words if he really
demonstrated in the clearest and most unmistakable way his
interest in the British Empire-he would have removed the biggest
stumbling block to his eventually succeeding Baldwin [14] as
Leader of the Party. It is, of course, more than possible that
Churchill's known dislike of safeguarding may render such a
development impossible but there can be no doubt that a change of
attitude on his part in regard to the Empire would go a long way
to assist his ambition.

While on the subject of the Business Mission, I unfeignedly hope
that the somewhat trying younger members of Arthur Duckham's
family will not have got in the way during the visit of the
Mission. I very strongly advised Duckham and his wife that the
best thing to do with the young people was to keep them away from
the Mission and let them get up country where they could see
something of station life.

I was most interested to find that you had found my notes on a
discussion which Walter Elliot [15] and I had had on 'Poor law for
safe-guarders and a developmental loan' stimulating. As you are so
keen on the idea, it is possible that you might find it useful if
I were to send you a memorandum suggesting some possible ways
whereby stringent conditions might be attached to a tariff system.

I will try to do something along these lines and let you have it
towards the end of November.

Your mention of Walter Elliot reminded me that you had never let
me know whether you had found time to read Elliot's little book
'Toryism and the Twentieth Century'. If you have not done so, I am
quite sure that you would find an hour spent on running through it
both interesting and amusing. It is not a very solid piece of work
but it does contain a number of very stimulating ideas.

It is rather curious that the day before I received your letter in
which you mention your action on the matter of the 75%-25% British
labour and material [16]-I should have heard from Whiskard [17],
of the Dominions Office, and later from Sir Edward Crowe [18], the
new official head of the Department of Overseas Trade, of the very
great appreciation which is felt in official circles here as to
the attitude which you have adopted in regard to British trade
since you took over the Portfolio of Trade and Customs. Apparently
Dalton [19] has written a most enthusiastic letter about this to
Cunliffe-Lister [20], who has circulated a copy to Amery. [21]
There can be no doubt that there was a very unhappy feeling in
official circles as to the way in which the Customs Department was
treating British trade interests and the change which you have
brought about is very much to the good. A constant sequence of
small irritants may do more harm than most people can realise.

After reading your comments on the memorandum from the Associated
Chambers of Commerce [22], I gathered that I made one mistake of
omission. Apparently I should have cabled to you to inform you
that a memorandum was being despatched from the British
Association to the Australian Association and to have advised that
you should have got into touch with the President of the
Associated Chambers in Australia. Fortunately this actually
happened but I should feel happier had I seen that this was the
proper thing for me to have done. I was probably misled into
thinking that they would accept the advice which I had most
vigorously given them that the memorandum should not have been
published at all.

The last part of your letter comments on the visit of Theiler [23]
and Orr. [24] I have written to you several times recently on this
subject so have no further comment so far as Orr is concerned, in
this letter.

SIR ARNOLD THEILER AND AUSTRALIA

On Monday I saw Amery with the idea of trying to obtain his
blessing on the proposition that C.S.I.R. should appoint Sir
Arnold Theiler as a member of the Scientific Staff of the
Commonwealth. Amery was nice about it but stressed the dependence
which he felt on Sir Arnold Theiler for assistance in dealing with
tropical animal diseases. I was able to tell Amery that I had
already discussed the matter fully with Ormsby-Gore [25] and
Elliot and that they had been prepared to agree but had also
stressed the importance of Theiler being occasionally available
for ad hoc pieces of work in tropical Africa. [26]

After a long talk, Amery agreed that I could cable to Australia to
inform C.S.I.R. that, provided Theiler himself was agreeable,
there would be no objection to C.S.I.R. appointing Theiler but
that it would be very much appreciated if Australia were prepared
to release Theiler occasionally to undertake an ad hoc piece of
work in some other part of the Empire. Amery pointed out how such
action on the part of Australia would assist towards the
realisation of the idea that it was necessary to use imperial team
work if we were successfully to tackle the problems of the
application of science to agriculture on a really large scale. I
very definitely asked Amery whether, in the event of Australia
acting along the lines which he felt to be so desirable, he would,
on his part, do whatever he could to obtain the temporary services
of outstanding men such as Orr when we felt that it was extremely
necessary. Amery agreed that this point was the obvious corollary
of what he had in mind and promised his assistance.

Yours sincerely,
F. L. MCDOUGALL