Dear Mr. Bruce,

IMPERIAL ECONOMIC COMMITTEE

Since my last letter no definite change has come over the
situation. The Inter-Departmental Committee is still considering
what action to recommend to Cabinet on the reports of the imperial
Economic Committee. I gather that there are now three conflicting
points of view.

1. That of Cunliffe-Lister [1], desirous of including British
manufactures and British agricultural produce in the expenditure
from the 1,000,000 grant.

2. That of the Dominion and Colonial Office, who want to see the
report implemented as it stands.

3. That of the Treasury which wants to whittle away the grant and
to reduce expenditure.

I had a long talk with Mr. Ormsby-Gore [2] yesterday. He is
frankly alarmed at the way in which the Board of Trade and the
Treasury are looking at the promised Annual Grant. I am also to
see Mr. Amery [3] on Monday. A Cabinet meeting made my meeting him
this week impossible.

EMPIRE ECONOMIC AFFAIRS

In my last two letters I have mentioned that I have been trying to
impress on the British Government the need for planning ahead on
Empire economic relations, I have made some further progress with
this and have found very strong opinion held in quarters that one
must regard as being authoritative that at the present time
Winston Churchill [4] is the snag. I am not altogether inclined to
put all the blame for lack of zeal on Empire matters down at
Churchill's door because I think quite a number of the Members of
the Cabinet are rather lukewarm.

At the recent Conference of the Conservative Party held at
Brighton [5], practically nothing was said or done about Empire
and Empire trade. When I commented on this to my Conservative M.P.

friends, they said 'What can you expect of a party that has F. S.

Jackson' as Chairman?'
I discussed this question also with Mr. Ormsby-Gore yesterday and
he told me that he was going to spend the last weekend in October
at Hatfield, where Mr. Baldwin [7] was also to be a guest, and he
promised to do everything in his power to make the Prime Minister
see the importance of the Conservative Party placing Empire and
Empire trade in the forefront of their programme.

I shall spare no pains to try to galvanise the Government into a
more lively interest than they are shewing at the present time.

LABOUR PARTY

On Thursday, October 15th, I received an urgent message from Mr.

Tom Johnston M.P. saying that he was leaving for India the next
day and would I have breakfast with him at 8 a.m. at Euston
Station on his arrival from Glasgow. I met him and had an
extraordinarily interesting hour.

To begin with he was very anxious for my approval of his calling
on the Scottish Bakers Trade Union to refuse to handle Greek and
Smyrna dried fruits. [8] He had corresponded with me about this
and I had told him quite definitely that Australia had far too
small stocks to meet a very great public demand and that any such
idea would be most unfortunate at the present time. I convinced
him at our meeting that this was the case. He said that there
would be no difficulty in getting all the bakers' workmen in
Scotland to refuse to handle Greek and Smyrna fruit. I am not at
all sure, however, that this is a desirable way of obtaining
Imperial preference. It is certainly not one that I have ever
dreamt of encouraging. It came quite spontaneously from the
Clydeside Labour Members. I think nothing will be said about this
for the next few months and perhaps at your leisure you might care
to comment thereon.

A much more important question brought up by Mr. Johnston was that
of the Labour Party Committee's report on the 'Importation of
Sweated Goods'. [9] I referred to this report in my letter of the
20th August [10] and the 'Daily Telegraph' published a most
interesting comment from you on August 12th on the subject. [11]

According to Mr. Johnston the position now is this: the free
importer section of the Labour Party, including at least four of
the signatories of the report, are most anxious that the report
should be buried in oblivion. Johnston, who is a strong and
determined man, is equally anxious that this should not happen and
I am fairly confident that, in the long run, Johnston will win but
Johnston is anxious to make progress and he therefore made the
following proposal to me. He wants me to find a method of
interesting Mr. Baldwin in the Labour Party's report and to get
Mr. Baldwin to publicly express an interest therein and even to go
so far as to send the Minister of Labour [12] to Geneva to discuss
with the International Labour Office the possibilities of action
along the lines of that report. He also desired me to get the
suggestion made that the Government should invite Mr., Philip
Snowden [13], as the Chairman of the Committee responsible for the
report, to accompany the Minister of Labour on the suggested visit
to Geneva.

Johnston's view was that if action of this sort could be taken,
Philip Snowden and the other free importers such as Tom Shaw [14],
Sidney Webb [15], and Lord Arnold [16] would be forced to back the
report on their own signatures.

I think you will agree that this is rather an amusing proposition
but one also of very great interest and I am very tentatively
exploring possible methods of getting the idea taken up.

PUBLICITY

With regard to the advertising proposals of the imperial Economic
Committee, I am extremely keen on getting a general background of
really first class importance and dignity to any propaganda which
may be adopted and in case you are interested, I enclose a brief
memorandum on the subject which I have prepared for the Imperial
Economic Committee and also for the Board of Trade.

DRIED FRUIT INDUSTRY

The Australian dried fruit industry started this morning a press
campaign to popularise the idea of an Empire Christmas Pudding. I
enclose a copy of the advertisement which appeared on the front
page of to-day's 'Daily Mail'. You will be interested to know that
60,000 copies of this re-print have been sent to grocers in the
United Kingdom. In this way I hope we shall get full value for the
1,400 which one insertion on the front page of the 'Daily Mail'
now costs.

A most tragic fact about this season's dried fruit operations is
the low quality of the Australian currants. Had they been good, we
should be obtaining far better prices and would have been able to
make quite sure of putting over the idea of using Empire instead
of foreign dried fruits.

MR. HAROLD COX [17]

In the 'Sunday Times' of October 18th Mr. Harold Cox again
attacked Australia and the Australian tariff. I wrote a reply
which Sir Joseph Cook [18] has, I believe, approved and sent to
the 'Sunday Times'. I enclose a copy of the reply.

I am forwarding herewith copy of some remarks made by Mr. Amery
about the Australian tariff, which will be of some interest to
you.

Yours sincerely,
F. L. MCDOUGALL