(Due to arrive Melbourne-3.4.26)

My dear P.M.,

Amongst my letters by this mail you will see one on Abyssinia that
constitutes an outline story of the machinations of the great
Powers in Abyssinia in recent years. It all seems to me a typical-
and inevitablemanoeuvre on the part of the Powers to exploit for
their own individual advantage a State that is a thousand years
behind the times.

Who is to blame them? If they don't get their share of the
pickings in Abyssinia, someone else will. As long as lions exist,
lambs will have to die.

As to the reason why I send you accounts of obscure countries-on
the infrequent occasions when there is not sufficient business of
major importance to keep me occupied, I indulge in a practice
which I call 'diving for pennies', that is to say, I choose some
country that one normally doesn't worry about, and go to the man
in the F.O. who concerns himself with it and get him to spend an
hour or so explaining the main points in its story. He is usually
so delighted at anyone taking an interest in his very small baby
that he takes a good deal of trouble with one. I then go back and
dictate a quick draft of my version of what he has told me and
send it to him to correct. I then get copies of the more important
relevant F.O. print to amplify any points of interest, and
eventually you get a letter on the subject.

This may sound rather like 'silly season' journalism. But on the
other hand, there are very few countries in the world that we can
afford to be ignorant about, and I think it is not without value
to have on file the highlights at least in the history of such
little countries.

2. There is a feeling about that there are underground
machinations brewing in Central and Eastern Europe. In this last
few weeks, there have been divulged (1) an attempt by France to
make a treaty with Jugoslavia in which she wants Italy to join;

(2) an attempt by Italy to make a treaty with Roumania; and (3)
French obstruction to the settlement of the Greek-Jugoslavia
railway question which was meant to smooth the way to the
beginning of a series of interstate Balkan arbitration pacts.

France and Italy are rivals and potential enemies. Heaven knows
why. They have no real points of mutual irritation. It is
apparently a case of inherent national enmity-which has been so
fruitful of trouble in the past.

Mussolini has apparently ambitions to be the king pin and to have
the say-so in all Central and Eastern European matters. Be it ever
so humble an Eastern European pie, he wants his finger in it.

It seems fairly clear that the French do not quite like the Pact.

[1] Briand [2], by force of character, put it through, but the
country does not regard it as providing complete security.

Therefore they continue trying to link themselves up with the
smaller Central European States whom they hope will fall on
Germany's back if Great Britain fails to play the part of
protector of France.

3. I had a long talk to Allen Leeper [3] lately. His main
conviction, after a year in Vienna, is that the Anschluss (German
absorption of Austria) is a foregone conclusion and will take
place whenever Germany is ready. He says nothing can stop it.

4. I talked to Tyrrell [4] two days ago about the threatened
enlargement of the Council of the League. I have reason to know
that until the last month or so (and probably still!) his personal
opinion was against any increase. However, he doubtless felt
himself bound, in loyalty to his chief, to deliver to me a long
harangue in the Chamberlain [5] manner. It was a very clever
forensic performance and I thoroughly enjoyed it, although its
point was rather lost on me in view of my previous knowledge of
his views. I had gone to him to know if he wanted a statement of
your views on the subject, and in spite of the line he took, I
finished by saying that whilst I had had no hint of your point of
view, I could well imagine that you might be against any Council
increase, and that if a statement to that effect from you would be
of value as a peg on which to hang a bouleversement of H.M.G.'s
opinion, I would telegraph you for your views. However, he
insisted that Chamberlain must go to Geneva with his hands as
little tied as possible, and so he said that he thought it best
not to ask you for your views in case they were such as would
further embarrass Chamberlain. The arguments that he traversed are
known to you and were not particularly convincing. [6]

Tyrrell asked me what I thought were your objections to a Council
increase. I said that, in the absence of any comment from you, I
thought that probably you would be mainly influenced by a desire
to maintain the original spirit of the Covenant and limit the
Council to a stamping ground for the major powers with world-wide
interests. [7] He said: 'Yes, that's all very well, but the
principle of increasing the Council by the addition of Spain was
discussed at Geneva in 1921 and Great Britain (in the shape of
Balfour [8]) then expressed her approval of the increase, and even
although it was not then consummated, we are still bound by the
fact that we admitted the principle': which does not appeal to me
as a very strong argument for sponsoring the admission of both
Spain and Poland in 1926. [9]

His principal argument was that the main European potential
trouble centre was the Polish-German frontier and that the wounds
were too sore to enable the Germans and the Poles to get together
by themselves and make equitable solution of their differences.

Only if they sat continuously at the same Council table would a
spirit of reasonableness be engendered.

After I had got back to my office and put the above on paper, your
telegram arrived putting on record your objections to an increase
of the Council and I was glad that I had forecast your point of
view to Tyrrell reasonably accurately.

One thing that seems to stand out is that there will be less
harmony in our relations with the French if they do not get their
way over this Council increase. They are sure to believe that
Chamberlain engineered the press campaign in this country against
the increase. The French have had their own way for so long on the
League that they dislike the prospect of not being able to swing
the Council through force of Latin opinion.

As Tyrrell I think very rightly emphasises, the League has not
taken the place of the Balance of Power. There will be peace in
Europe as long as the four major powers agree, and discord or
worse when they disagree, the League notwithstanding-at any rate
until such time as the League reaches far greater powers than it
now possesses.

5. Chamberlain has undoubtedly lost greatly in prestige over this
affair of the Council increase. He has had the Foreign Office and
the Cabinet and the press of the whole country against him. People
have firmly got it into their heads that he has been talked into
the stand he has taken by the mesmeric influence of Briand, who is
said to have something of the same effect on a sturdy, honest
character as Lloyd George [10] or 1911 Goulet. That rare Spaniard,
Quinones de Leon (Spanish Ambassador in Paris) has also apparently
thrown the net of his personal charm over Chamberlain.

6. I read Tyrrell as a man prone to rather violent and sometimes
hasty opinions and apt to depend on his remarkably quick intuitive
brain to provide a formula than to the close reasoning and intense
study of all sides of a question that Crowe [11] used to bring to
bear. He does not hold the Foreign Office in the hollow of his
hand in the way that Crowe did and he does not influence or
correlate their opinion as Crowe undoubtedly did. The Foreign
Office is less of a keen-edged weapon under Tyrrell than under
Crowe.

7. Tyrrell is not a very fit man and will not, I think, last many
years at the job which is a very exacting one. The next senior man
in the office is Victor Wellesley [12], who would be quite
unsuitable. Eric Drummond [13] may be considered again, or they
may bring one of the Ambassadors from abroad, although popular
talk says that this has not been a great success in the past, and
there is apparently no outstanding figure amongst our Ambassadors
abroad who could change his spots sufficiently to develop the
rather peculiar qualities required by the Foreign Secretary's
chief technical adviser. It would be difficult to promote Miles
Lampson [14] over the heads of both Wellesley and Gregory. [15]

I hear on good authority that Hankey [16] was considered for the
job of permanent Head of the Foreign Office on Crowe's death. I
don't know if it was ever offered to him-I should imagine not.

[17]

8. I dined lately with Dufour-Feronce, Counsellor of the German
Embassy, Herr Stharner [18] (German Ambassador), Palmstierna [19]
(Swedish Minister in London) and his wife, young Bernstorff (1st
Secretary of German Embassy), von Plessen (2nd Secretary, German
Embassy), a few other odd Germans and three or four of us non-
Germans.

Bernstorff was a pre-war German Rhodes Scholar and is a pleasant
and, I should think, a capable fellow.

It is said that the Swedes are in the pocket of the Germans. In
this respect they are very different from Denmark and the other
Baltic States, who are uniformly suspicious of the Germans.

Palmstierna himself and his wife are always very pleasant to me
and I like them both personally. Perhaps one is captious in
disliking seeing him confidentially closeted with Sthamer in a
corner, pouring confidences into his ear and waving his cigar at
him.

One gathers from conversation with the Germans that they are not
received everywhere yet and that they feel the existence socially
of a good deal of anti-German feeling. One woman told me that she
had just had a tentative lease of a house cancelled at the last
moment because she was a German, 'and I', she said, 'had my only
son killed in the war'.

They much approve the relaxing of the immigration regulations in
respect to Germans entering Australia but, owing to the question
of money, they do not think that it will result in any very
greatly increased flow of German nationals into Australia for some
time at least.

They freely admit the fact that Germany's greatest problem is that
of population pressure. Their quota to U.S. is much the same as
that of Great Britain, about 50,000-but they are gloomy about the
future disposal of the great surplus masses. They admit that they
look towards Russia with some hope.

The main subject of conversation is of Germany's entry into the
League and of the possible simultaneous entry of other powers. 'It
is a very anxious time for us.' 'You don't elect to join a Club
and expect to find the rules of membership altered on the day you
join.' They are courteous and pleasant. Whenever there is even one
Englishman in the room they invariably speak English.

Sthamer is not a diplomat de carriere. He was previously Mayor of
Hamburg.

9. I wonder if you have ever heard of the Loeb Classical Library
in America. James Loeb, a banker-millionaire of the firm of Kuhn,
Loeb, got the idea of producing a uniform series of authentic
translations from Greek and Latin classics, with the original text
on the lefthand page and the English translation on the right. He
got the very best men to do the translations, from both English
and American Universities, and he produces the volumes at about
10/-each, which barely pays for the work. It is an original form
of high-grade constructive philanthropy aimed at raising the
cultural standard of a certain grade of the population who
normally get nothing done for them that they don't do for
themselves.

It would not be a bad lead for some wealthy Australian to proceed
on similar lines. We need waking up to a greater appreciation of
the written word-not only the classics but works of a more diverse
and less highbrow nature.

10. There has been a revival in the course of the last eighteen
months of the old idea of the 'pamphlet' in the form of a series
of little books published by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.,
and called the 'Today and Tomorrow' series. They have induced
people who are more or less authorities on their particular
subjects to briefly expound their point of view as to the state of
their particular art or interest as they conceive it to exist
today, and the lines on which they expect it to develop. They
adopt a classical title with an explanatory sub-title, such as
'Daedalus, or Science and the future'; or 'Cassandra, or the
Future of the British Empire'. They are sold at half-a-crown and
have caught on very successfully.

I enclose 'Cassandra' for you to see what the series is like.

11. In the course of this Council increase controversy someone
asked, for their own information, what the population of Brazil
was. They were told about 25 million. 'As many as that? That must
be when they all come down out of the trees!'

12. Recently overheard at a dinner table. 'So and so was wounded
in sixteen places.' 'Really, I didn't know a man had sixteen
places he could be wounded in!'

I am, Yours sincerely,
R. G. CASEY