While you are away from Ottawa you may be able to consider, with greater detachment than is possible here, what can be done to reduce the extreme congestion in the direction of the Department. The appointment of a separate Secretary of State for External Affairs is necessary before a number of the most desirable changes can be made, but we have reached a position in which other changes not connected with such an appointment ought to be instituted.

Among the first essentials is a firm resolution on your own part, which must be backed by the efforts of your personal staff, to prevent the accumulation in your office of papers which are awaiting an opportunity that often cannot arise for you to examine them. I should like to see the whole apparatus of baskets filled with waiting papers swept away and the office adorned with no more paper than that which you require for the work immediately in hand. A mere resolution on your part will, of course, not achieve this end without changes in practice, which must, if they are to succeed, be applied con¬sistently and even ruthlessly.

The first needed change in practice is that a great deal of paper that is now routed through your office should not be so routed. This means that there will have to be a much more rigorous selection from the reports reaching the Department of the material sent to you only for information. It also means that you should not attempt to follow a number of Departmental activities, except when they give rise to questions of some substance.

In order to enable you to find time to deal with matters which are the essential concern of the Under-Secretary, some change should be made to reduce constant interruptions. I find these the most trying aspect of work in Ottawa; it is usually difficult to concentrate on one matter for more than a few minutes, and interruptions often occur at the most inconvenient moment. This will mean the deflection of many visitors, including members of the department, to other officers, and it will also mean rendering yourself less accessible on the telephone. On the latter point I would suggest a stringent rule that when you are conferring with other people in your office or dictating your telephone should be shut off except in specially urgent matters, as the constant succession of telephone calls not only makes discussion or dictation difficult but wastes the time of those with you. The British practice of passing telephone calls to a senior official only through a private secretary who can act as a filter might be instituted here.

The administrative problems of the Department must also be filtered more thoroughly before they reach you for decision. The barriers between the Under-Secretary and individual members of the Department and Service should be made more formidable. When Matthews returns this situation will improve, but changes in system are needed to diffuse responsibility for promotions, transfers and so on, and to prevent your office being used as the repository of numerous individual claims and grievances.

Any changes in method will have to be rigorously applied, as otherwise we shall just slip back into the present confusion. It is thoroughly bad policy to permit a position to arise in which the permanent headship of the Department is a killing post. With the current and prospective extent of our activities, the only way in which the post can be made tolerable is for the holder to achieve a greater remoteness from the daily demands, pressures and worries which are inevitable in the conduct of the foreign policy of a country as large as Canada. This remoteness can only be established by delegation to others, so that there is an effective and constant separation between the matters really requiring the Under-Secretary's attention and those which can be conducted without contact with him. I am sure that one of the first objectives is to diminish to modest proportions the flow of paper which now engulfs him.

The general conclusion of this note is that the Under-Secretary must be more effectively sheltered from the approaches of all and sundry, whether these approaches are made in person, by telephone or in writing. A system which will relieve the pressure on his time so as to enable him to devote sufficient attention to central problems can only be developed over a considerable period and can never be complete. We have, I think, gone some distance towards the acceptance of a more reasonable order of priorities in departmental business, but there is still a long way to go. The appointment of a full-time Minister would be of substantial assistance here. In addition, however, the Department and establishments abroad are now large enough to require the interposition between the Under-Secretary and the Chiefs of Division of three or four senior officials, each of whom would supervise the activities of two or more divisions. When this can be done, most of the matters reaching the Under-Secretary should do so through a Deputy or Assistant Under-Secretary rather than direct from Divisional chiefs or other officers. Our personnel problems, of course, prevent the selection of suitable officers for all of these posts in the near future.

A step which might be possible almost at once is to appoint as personal assistant or private secretary to the Under-Secretary an officer of higher rank who would be in direct charge of the Under-Secretary's office and who would have some authority to regulate the flow of business reaching the UnderSecretary personally and to direct the other members of the office. In rank such an officer should perhaps be a First Secretary. He should have if possible a room to himself. He should see the incoming telegrams and should be present at many of the discussions in the Under-Secretary's office so that he could make a note of the outcome. The post should be regarded as about on a parity in importance with that of a chief of division.

H. W[RONG]