2110-7-7-7

Private and confidential.

31st December, 1935.

'l'he Rt Honble W. Mackenzie King, C.M.G., M.P., Laurier House, Ottawa.

My dear Prime Minister

I am very distressed to get the news this morning about your health. I do hope you will nurse your cold carefully and take no risks, for a tired man cannot afford to neglect any ailment. Don't, please, come to the levee tomorrow unless you feel quite well.

You did me the honour to ask me to offer you some suggestions about the reorganisation of your office. I have prepared the enclosed little memorandum, which represents merely my first impressions. Perhaps it might be the basis of a talk when you have considered the matter from your own standpoint.

Yours ever,

Notes on a Prime Minister's Chef du Cabinet.

1.

The British Practice.

Perhaps a short outline of the British practice might be useful.

The Prime Minister has the following assistants:-

A. A principal private secretary with, as a rule, one assistant. This is an official chosen from fairly high up in one of the Government Departments, and seconded for the purpose. It is a stepping stone to a high departmental post. For example, Sir Robert Vansittart is now Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, and Sir Patrick Duff at the Office of Works. The principal private secretary spends his time between the Prime Minister's room at the House of Commons and 10 Downing Street. He arranges for all important interviews, writes all the more important letters, which the P.M. signs, and takes general supervision of the P.M.'s engagements. He is the medium through which the Palace communicates with him, and all Government Departments. He never accompanies him on any speaking tours, but always remains at headquarters to supervise the P.M.'s continuing work. He is in a strict sense his official private secretary.

B. Personal private secretaries. These look after the P.M.'s private engagements, such as dinners, visits, etc., and personal correspondence, and continue with him when he is out of office. Mr. Baldwin has had Sir Georffrey Fry for a good many years, and a

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variety of assistants like Lord Hinchinbrooke. They are wholly unofficial and are attached to him personally, and not as Prime Minister. Mr. Macdonald had several people of the same sort, none of them very good. They accompany him on private and political visits up and down the country, and very frequently to public dinners. In a sense they are rather like my A.D.C's.

C. Parliamentary private secretaries. These look after the P.M.'s work in the House. Mr. Baldwin has had various people, like Charles Rhys and Geoffrey Lloyd (now a Minister), and at present he has Major Dugdale. Mr. Macdonald had Sir Ralph Glyn.

The weakness of these various arrangements has been twofold. First the P.M. has had no one to act as a geneal intelligence officer, except indirectly - no one whose business it was to keep him informed about books or articles he should read, or people he should talk with, or new currents of popular opinion. Secondly he had had no one to act as a real liaison between the different Government Departments over which he has to exercise a general oversight. The latter duty has been largely performed by Sir Maurice Hankey, who as Secretary both of the Cabinet and of the Committee of Imperial Defence has an intimate knowledge of departmental work. His long experience, and especially his work in the country given him a unique authority. At the same time it is difficult for him to be a real liaison with Departments, since he has no status vis-a-vis the Prime Minister. In January 1934 Mr. Macdonald found the situation so difficult that he discussed the questions of making me a member of the Cabinet without portfolio, to act as his personal assistant.

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There were obvious difficulties in doing this, but it was arranged between him and Mr. Baldwin that I should do the work privately, as I had been doing for some time for Mr. Baldwin himself. That was my status for nearly eighteen months - the whole thing being kept, of course, very private. It was not a satisfactory arrangement, for though I was able to help Mr. Macdonald in many aways personally, my relations to the different Government Departments had always to be very delicate and difficult.

I constantly impressed both upon Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Macdonald the necessity of the reconstruction of the P.M.'s office in the direction of something like a chef du cabinet. Even in Britain, with a large and highly competent Civil Service to draw upon, and with the enormous asset of Sir Maurice Hankey, there was apt to be a good deal of confusion, and the Prime Minister had to do a great deal of unnecessary work himself, and often was kept in the dark about quite vital matters.

2.

Suggestions for a Chef du Cabinet.

The folowing notes are only the most modest suggestions because I am not yet fully informed about the details of Canadian administration. Here you have no Hankey as a permanent reservoir of knowledge, and you have not a sufficiently developed Civil Service to make it easy to second the right people when you want them. The task of the Prime Minister too, is in some ways heavier, for he is himself the head of the Department of External Affairs. It seems to me that he needs a permanent principal assistant of a very special

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type. The first step towards finding the right man is to make certain what his duties would be, and I would suggest the following as a scheme of work:-

a. He should be the head of the P.M.'s office, with perhaps two assistants. In this capacity he should be responsible for making all appointments for the P.M., for dealing with all his correspondence except that which was purely private. Ordinary letters should be answered by his assistants, more important letters should be prepared by himself for the P.M.'s signature. The P.M. should never have to write official letters on his own account. He should map out in advance the P.M.'s day, allowing for a reasonable amount of leisure, and should be as jealous as a gorgon about unnecessary engagements. He should never accompany the P.M. on tour, or to political meetings. That should be the task of a political secretary chosen from the members of the House.

b. He should be the P.M.'s intelligence officer, reporting to him any books which he thinks important, or any special information which he receives; keeping an eye on the press and on publications in general, and marking what he thinks the P.M. ought to read; preparing memoranda on special questions on which it is desirable that the P.M. should be informed (That is the kind of work I have been doing for a long time, both for Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Macdonald, and it is of real importance.)

c. He should be the P.M.'s principal liaison officer with all Departments, including his own Department of External Affairs. For this purpose he must be a man who understands the Government machine and knows the country and the personnel. This task requires