26 JUNE 1941, Page 4

In view of the suggestion that Mr. Menzies may yet

return to London as a member of the War Cabinet, a private letter I have received this week from an Englishman in Washington on the Australian Prime Minister's recent visit to the United States has its interest. " The great British success so far," the note runs, " is Menzies. He has been tremendous. Blank [a high authority in a high official position] is saying that he is the second strongest man in the Empire. The journalists here got from him what they regarded as by far the best statement on the strategy of the Mediterranean. I have not heard such unqualified tributes about any British visitor." Most of this, no doubt, is personal to Mr. Menzies. But it gives some support to the claim, for which there is a good deal to be said, that the average Commonwealth statesman stands closer temperamentally than the average British to the average American citizen. There are likely to be less frills about him, and Americans don't much care for frills.

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