Just a line in further regard to political reporting, though not strictly connected with our recent D.C. Circular.¹

We note that your political reports are generally marked ‘Confidential’ and that consequently, owing to a rule of our Registry system, which for various reasons we are not inclined to change, they come down as a bunch to the Secretary in person. That means that instead of being able to concentrate on your principal reports on major subjects, the Secretary has to glance through a whole pile of them before marking them out urgently to the Assistant Secretaries. In short, he is acting rather as a ‘Registrar’ and, Fay and myself, are becoming mere sub-Registrars!

When I get a huge heap of reports I mark them quickly down without, I fear, always reading them as well as I should. In short it is always better from everyone’s point of view to have the ‘triage’ done in the Sections and not by the Secretary so that the cream comes up instead of the milk being separated by those who want the cream!

Would you see anything against addressing your very special reports to ‘Seán Nunan Esq’ (as Fred and some of the others do) or would you please use ‘Confidential’ only for those special reports? All your reports are liable sooner or later to get to the Minister, but, unless they are urgent, the system suggested now will have the advantage of enabling those officers primarily concerned with the subject matter to study them first. Please let me know if you have any counter-proposals on this?

[handwritten postscript by Rynne]

The DC has resulted in our being almost swamped by political reports here!