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evidence. I attach the comments of the Culonial Secretary, (enclosure 5), the Acting Financial Secretary and the Accountant

Enclosure General on this issue.

No.6.

I have read the relevant files. Mr. Butters' minutes

are for the most part tersely and strongly worded but as they applied to the known chaos in the financial arrangements of the Immigration Department, which Mr. Forrest doggedly refused

to organize on proper lines, I de not regard them as unjustifiably severe on the part of a responsibly-minded

Financial Secretary.

Pudney's minutes contain nothing

positive to which exception can be taken: he certainly gave the Commissioners the impression that he had been unhelpful but from the papers before me it seems that though keeping very strictly within the limits of his office, he tried at any rate at first to assist Mr. Forrest.

Nothing

mordant is traceable in the few Secretariat minutes dealing with this department's affairs and I have it from Mr. Forrest himself that the Secretariat officers shewed him much personal sympathy and kindness though officially they could not give

him the aid which he needed.

13.

But, while I feel sure that there was a real wish

on the part of the Secretariat and the Treasury to help Mr. Forrest, I regret that I cannot dissent from the conclusion to which the Commission point in paragraphs 40

and 41, viz. that firmer handling of the matter in those two departments would have served saterially to help the Immigration Department in its pressing and eonfounding difficulties and incidentally would have saved much time

and trouble all round. It seems to have been clear at an

early stage that on the one hand the new department was

gravely deficient in staff, accommodation and equipment and that on the other its financial organization was gravely

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