My dear Prime Minister,

This morning has brought me your letter of the 11th July. [1] In
your comments on my letter of the 11th May [2] you do not make it
clear whether or not you feel that any especially advantageous
purposes would be served by a visit of Loveday [3] to Australia. I
rather take it from the tone of your comments that whereas you
would welcome any decision on the part of the economic
organisations of the League to send Mr. Loveday to visit
Australia, you are not very likely to take the initiative in
inviting him, or in providing any finance in connection with the
visit.

I expect that under present circumstances the wisest line is
simply to urge on Salter [4] and the Economic Committee of the
League that it is quite insufficient for the Economic Staff of the
League to understand Europe, and that it is necessary for them to
have a lively understanding of conditions in the distant non-
European countries. It will probably be better for the Director of
the new Economic Research Bureau [5] to have been appointed, and
to have settled down for six months to perhaps a year, before any
active steps towards the arrangements for such a visit were taken
in hand. This would mean that there would be an opportunity of
discussing this point fully with you when you come over for the
Imperial Conference.

I was particularly glad to receive your comments on the suggestion
of the British Delegation to the Economic Consultative Committee
of the League, which was later adopted by the Consultative
Committee, that a conference of business men should be held. [6] I
had, perhaps, not made it quite sufficiently clear that the
British Delegation's idea was for a conference of business men in
a given group of industries. I am very doubtful whether any really
useful purpose would be achieved by any such conference, but at
the same time, as you recognise, it is impossible entirely to
block the development of such ideas, and one must therefore do
everything possible to divert them into useful, or at least
harmless channels.

I was rather interested to see your comments on Elliot's [7]
articles, and I quite understand your feeling that they do not
contribute anything very much of value, but I am not quite sure
that I agree, because it is tremendously important to get a new
and progressive spirit into Empire development and perhaps
particularly Colonial development. The Colonial Office is probably
the worst department in Whitehall, and presides with a spirit of
obstruction, superiority and boredom over the fate of the Colonial
Empire. These articles of Elliot's were regarded as pernicious,
indeed subservient [sic], by the Colonial Office, but I feel they
should make people think.

With regard to the formation of the group about which I wrote you
on the 23rd May [8], several difficulties arose, with the result
that the first meetings of this group have been postponed until
the middle of October. Its membership is now, however, arranged,
and will consist of Mackinder [9], Chadwick [10], Sir Basil
Blackett [11], Philip Kerr [12], Sir Arthur Balfour [13], Sir
William Larke [14] and myself I am arranging to meet Blackett
before I leave for Geneva, as he has been appointed a Chairman of
the new Colonial Development Fund [15], and that fund may overlap
in certain directions with the Empire Marketing Board.

I travelled up last night from Aberdeen, where I spent three days
in consultation with Dr. Orr [16] and his staff on a whole series
of matters concerning animal nutrition, wool research etc. I think
perhaps you will be amused to hear that I took two afternoons off
for the purpose of playing golf. The last game I had-if you would
call it a game-was when I went round the course at Frankston with
you in 1924. With Orr I played on a delightful nine hole course at
Kin Tor and to my intense amusement I found that Orr's game was
considerably worse than my own. I think that the combined stimulus
of the rounds at Frankston and Kin Tor will stimulate me towards
taking golf up, because although in many ways I prefer walking,
yet at the same time I do not think that walking provides the same
mental relaxation as golf. At golf one's mind does become
concentrated on the miserable ball, whereas when walking one is,
of course, thinking the whole time.

I shall write to you by the next mail about several of the points
discussed with Orr, as some of them were of considerable
importance to Australia.

Yours sincerely,
F. L. MCDOUGALL