Dear Moynihan,¹

I enclose copy of a minute received this morning from the High Commissioner describing the first reactions to the Aide-mémoire of the 22nd instant on the Coal-Cattle proposals.

[Enclosure]

I handed to Sir Edward Harding this evening the aide memoire dated 22nd January on the coal-cattle proposals. It was not possible to get the various Officers concerned together earlier.

There were present in addition to Sir Edward Harding, representatives of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Board of Trade. Both Sir Edward Harding and Mr. Overton, Assistant Secretary of the Board of Trade, told me that they had experienced very great difficulty in getting the Chancellor's² assent to the reductions in duty which they have already proposed and they thought it extremely unlikely that he would agree to any increase in the proposed losses to their exchequer.

They also said that our new proposals would need a good deal of time for examination, and owing to the interruption caused by the King's death and the funeral arrangements there was no chance of their giving these proposals adequate consideration for another week or ten days. The proposal for example about the Ottawa duties opened up an entirely new and difficult question on which they would be unable to avoid Cabinet discussion and its consequent delays.

In reply I stressed the real urgency of the matter and suggested that there were Officers in the Board of Trade and the Ministry of Agriculture who would not be so occupied with the work in connection with next Tuesday's arrangements. Eventually I got them to agree that they would look at these proposals tomorrow and speak to me on Monday on my suggestion that our Officers should cross over say on Wednesday or Thursday of next week. From what Mr. Street³ said to me afterwards I think he would be very glad to have a talk with Mr. Twomey on Thursday of next week about the February arrangements, even though he, Mr. Street, might not be ready to talk about our new proposals.