SECRET.
STATEMENTS OF PUBLIC MEN ON THE ATTITUDE TO RUSSIA.

1. At the instance of the Overseas Planning Committee of July 1st, I submit the following proposition to the Executive Board.

2. It is urgently necessary in Latin America particularly, to take immediate action to meet the equivocal state of public opinion with special regard to its extremes, Conservative and Communist, on the Russian issue. It is not sufficient to rely only on the Prime Minister's statement, because the effect of this necessarily evanesces. Nor is departmental work by the Ministry of Information a sufficiently bold approach to so vital a problem. Therefore it is necessary to return again and again to the charge, at the same time keeping the treatment as authoritative and weighty as possible.

3. For this reason we wish to secure the statements of at least half a dozen Conservative and Socialist politicians and public figures. These statements would be in form of a few hundred words draft answering the question ‘why I think the Churchill position is the only possible one and the only proper way of hitting Hitler for six.’ It is necessary, however, that the gentlemen who are approached be ready for their names to be used in the widest possible manner and, indeed, for a factual note to be added as to their political career. These statements would be cabled by us to Buenos Aires and other focal points, with instructions that they be distributed as fly sheets in their thousands.

4. I bring this proposal forward urgently, because we do not wish it said on this occasion as of others in the past, that the Ministry of Information has missed an opportunity and is playing around in the shallows when a really big current might be released. May I, therefore, submit that the Executive Board consider the approval of this idea, remitting it to Mr. Robert Fraser for action. It is most necessary, however, that the matter be handled on a Ministerial basis with the approval, I urge, of our own Minister.

Kenneth G. Grubb

2nd July, 1941.