Dear Mr. Bruce,

IMPERIAL ECONOMIC COMMITTEE

Yesterday I found that Mr. W. H. Clifford [1] had reached London
on Sunday, June 6th. I therefore asked him if he would meet me a
quarter of an hour before the time fixed for the meeting of the
Committee. We had a talk and, as a result, Mr. Clifford made up
his mind to accept your invitation and to serve on the Committee
for the remainder of the Dairy Produce Enquiry.

I introduced Mr. Clifford to the Chairman [2] and members of the
Committee and he took his scat yesterday morning.

I am personally very glad to have the assistance of so well
qualified an expert in the Dairy industry and I feel sure that he
will add considerably to the weight which will be attached in
Australia to the Dairy Produce Report of the Imperial Economic
Committee to have Mr. Clifford's signature, as well as my own, on
that document.

I received on Monday last your letter of the 6th of May [3]
enclosing a memorandum about the Dairying industry of Australia.

Now that Mr. Clifford is here, I shall propose to him, using the
memorandum which you have forwarded as a basis, that we should
prepare a full statement about the Australian Dairy industry for
the Imperial Economic Committee and put in the document under our
joint signatures.

I have just received from the Prime Minister's Department the
following cables in reply to mine asking for information on the
Paterson scheme and the operation of the Rural Credits Act [4]:

4th June 1926
Your telegram 2nd June information asked for by you re Paterson
scheme and Rural credit being obtained. Will be forwarded as soon
as possible.

10th June 1926
Personal information required Patersons scheme and Rural Credits
Act mailed you today 10th June.

I am very glad that you have been able to arrange for this
information to be sent so speedily as it will arrive in time to be
considered by the Committee before they set to work on the final
stages of drafting the report.

FRUIT REPORT

The Fruit Report is being issued this morning and Sir Halford
Mackinder is meeting the press at 11.30 a.m.

I have done everything that I can think of in order to ensure a
wide discussion of the report as soon as it appears. I have made
special arrangements with both the 'Times' and the 'Daily
Telegraph' and have written to all the Editors that I know
personally. I also got four Members of the Conservative Party to
promise to interview all the Lobby Correspondents of the
Provincial newspapers and to impress upon them the importance of
the Fruit Report. I hope I have made arrangements which will lead
to its being discussed in a number of weekly and monthly papers.

I suppose there has not been time yet to have any word from you by
mail as to your impressions of the Fruit Report but I am certainly
looking forward to hearing your frank comments.

EMPIRE MARKETING BOARD

The third meeting of the Empire Marketing Board was held yesterday
and further protracted but rather desultory conversations occurred
on the recommendations of the Imperial Economic Committee
involving action.

The Board came to the conclusion that real progress could not be
made until the Sub-Committees appointed report on how (a)
publicity (b) research should be tackled.

I have put in a brief memorandum on the subject of the idea of
Empire agriculture with the purpose of demonstrating to the
British agricultural representatives that there was no reason why
their interests should not be served along the lines of the
interests of the overseas farmer and the Board appeared to be in
general agreement with the view that I had tried to express in
this memorandum. I enclose a copy of the memorandum herewith.

The Publicity Sub-Committee met on Tuesday evening from 7.0 to
11.30 P.M. and came to definite conclusions as to the type of
organization that should be recommended to the Board and on the
type of work that should be undertaken during the next six months.

I am very glad to say that the other Members of this Sub-Committee
accepted my idea that arrangements should be made whereby a
general scheme of educational publicity based on special articles
in the newspapers and a poster campaign throughout Great Britain
should be put into operation if possible during the latter part of
September and brought into full operation in early October so as
to coincide with the Imperial Conference.

If the Marketing Board accepts the recommendations of this Sub-
Committee, I think we may anticipate rapid progress on this side
of the work.

The Research Sub-Committee has not yet met but arrangements have
been made whereby the whole of the evening of Tuesday, June 15th,
will be devoted to a discussion by the Sub-Committee.

You will notice that it has become necessary to arrange for a
number of these additional meetings to be held in the evenings as
the normal working hours of the day are already more than fully
congested.

AGRICULTURE DINNER

On the 9th June I sent you the following cable:-

Central and Associated Chambers of Agriculture and The Farmers'
Club holding joint Annual Dinner December 7th. These bodies even
more representative of British agriculture than National Farmers'
Union. They are most anxious to entertain you as their chief
guest. If date unsuitable they would attempt arrange earlier date
but hope you could manage December 7th. Strongly recommend
acceptance. Please reply.

Mr. F. N. Blundell, M.P., the representative of British
agriculture on the Imperial Economic Committee is this year the
President of the Central and Associated Chambers of Agriculture.

He is most anxious that you should consent to be the guest of the
Chambers at their Annual Dinner which, for a hundred years, has
been held on a day to coincide with the Smithfield Show. The
Farmers' Club is also joining in with the Dinner and Blundell
assures me that every part of agricultural interests, from the
land owner, the estate agents, the working farmer and, to a very
limited extent, the agricultural trade unions, will be represented
at this dinner.

Mr. Blundell said that rather than lose the chance of having you
as their guest, they would attempt to alter the date of the dinner
but, in view of the historic association of the dinner with the
Show, he very much hoped that you would see your way to accept the
invitation on the date mentioned provided that you were going to
be in England on that date. I therefore thought it desirable to
send the cable.

Mr. Blundell is proposing to invite Mr. Coates [5], the Prime
Minister of New Zealand, to be the second guest on this occasion,
if he should happen to be in London after the Conference but Mr.

Blundell asked me to assure you that you would be the principal
guest and that his Executive Committee were most anxious to meet
your convenience.

There is no doubt that your speech in October 1923 to the National
Farmers' Union did a great deal of good and I feel that it is
highly desirable that you should once again have an opportunity of
addressing British agriculture from a sound agricultural platform.

I therefore ventured to add to my cable words indicating that I
strongly recommended acceptance.

SIR GEORGE BUCHANAN [6]

Sir George Buchanan invited Casey [7] and myself to meet him at
lunch on Monday last. He then told us that he was receiving
messages from you urging him to forward his report at the earliest
possible moment. He explained that he was giving the whole of his
time to the preparation of the report but that the mass of
information that he had and his desire to make the report a
comprehensive and therefore satisfactory document involved a great
deal of time. He appeared to be anxious that both Casey and I
should write to you on the subject.

I presume that Sir George is in direct communication with you by
both cable and letter and as I have no knowledge of his terms of
reference or the magnitude of his task, I feel that I can make no
really useful comment. Sir George handed to both Casey and myself
a paper shewing the scope of his report, which I enclose herewith.

I gathered that he now intends to forward you the first volume
before the second volume is completed and hopes to be able to
despatch it within the next three or four weeks.

STABILIZATION OF PREFERENCE

I enclose an extract from Hansard giving the whole of the debate
on the stabilization of preference in the House of Commons. [8] No
very new points were made but I have marked one or two passages
and would draw your particular attention to a portion of Haden
Guest's [9] speech which I have marked heavily. I regard this as
the most important suggestion put forward during the debate and
hope that it will bear some fruit.

From an Australian point of view the stabilization of preference
is of more value as a gesture than for any actual value that it
would bring, except in the case of Queensland sugar.

EDUCATIONAL PROPAGANDA

On Monday last I met a small Sub-Committee of Conservative Members
to consider the formation of a larger body of Members to use every
possible method of interesting the country through the press and
through Parliament in the problems to come before the economic
side of the Imperial Conference. The Members present were the Hon.

Oliver Stanley, a son of Lord Derby [10], Col. the Hon. Angus
McDonnell, Mr. Luke Thompson (Member for Sunderland) and Mr.

Ramsden [11] (Member for North Bradford). We made a certain amount
of progress but, as so often happens, were interrupted time after
time by divisions and finally postponed the meeting until a later
date. I am very hopeful that we shall be able to make some
definite progress in this direction.

Yours sincerely,
F. L. MCDOUGALL