Last evening I informed Sir Thomas Inskip that the Minister had instructed me to inform him, as a matter of courtesy, that a change would shortly be made in the existing form of our passport. The details of and the reasons for this change, as set out in the minute which I received from you yesterday¹, I explained to Sir Thomas Inskip.

He said that whilst he agreed that the less the association of the States called the British Commonwealth depended on forms the better, he gravely doubted whether we were right in thinking that changes of this character would help forward a friendly relationship in England. He feared it would have the opposite effect. It was a step in the wrong direction, more particularly so far as the removal of Partition was concerned, since it would increase the difficulties of the British in trying to get the Six County people into a state of mind which would make some solution possible.

His own hope was that after the Agreement of last year a new chapter might have been opened in which we might have seen the King in his true position today as a monarch acting only on advice. He thought it was the politicians rather than the Kings who are to be blamed for the happenings of the past. The Commonwealth group represented a system of freedom which he thought would fall to pieces if it were not for its common centre, not of Authority but rather of sentiment.

I suggested that whilst there was doubtless a case for the people who sincerely felt the sentiment of English Kingship there was nothing to be said for a people like ourselves proclaiming a sentiment which we did not feel. Sir Thomas Inskip agreed and said that it was not so much regretting our leaving the King out of the passport, which was as we had contended only a form, but the fact that we had not the feeling of respect for the King of which the form was but the expression.

What he feared was that even people in his own party who were well disposed towards our Government and were ready to recognise the realities of the situation would ask him where this process was going to stop.

The impression which I formed from this conversation was that Sir Thomas Inskip did not feel that the change presented any great difficulty but that he would have to endure over it a certain amount of embarrassment from the Diehards in the Six Counties and also in this country.