Forgive me writing to you after an interval of what I think must be forty-five years. Let me explain why I am writing. In the process of tidying up my room in the Marshall library, I found a diary of the Bretton Woods Conference. It was a typescript copy on foolscap paper. It was fascinating. It was obviously written by someone very much more alive and intelligent than the ordinary Treasury civil servant. By a process of elimination, I arrived at you as the almost certain author. I sent it to Donald Moggridge, who has edited the Bretton Woods volume in our Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes. He confirmed that it was not among the Keynes papers in the King's College archive.

I am very much obliged by your kind letter of March 20 with its enclosure confirming my appointment as Head of the Food Mission here and containing a memorandum of terms of reference of the Mission. I appreciate very sincerely the confidence you have shown me in asking me to be Head of the Mission. I need not say that I shall do my very utmost to fulfil this task satisfactorily as well as to carry out the duties involved in my membership of the British Supply Council in Washington. The problems arising out of the Lend-Lease Act, with which the Council has to deal, are novel and some important ones still await solution.