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Secret duplicated Home Office document, no other copy of which has been discovered (none on OCLC WorldCat, for example) and no reference to the meeting found. The document is a transcript of a highly significant meeting, called by a busy Hoare (he would have an important cabinet meeting on the same day) to explain to press representatives the remit (on the basis of 'voluntary Censorship') of the newly-formed Ministry of Information, and also including discussions of 'the questions of transport, labour, and so on' that the press would face in the case of war, as well as the planned nature of future meetings, and the need for secrecy (with reference to the operation of D Notices). The meeting is a frank one, including an exchange during which Hoare declares 'This rather depresses me. I am beginning to wonder whether this meeting is of any use. […] I did not in the least want this meeting: I imagined I was doing it for your convenience.' At the beginning Hoare explains that he has called the meeting at the request of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, and declares that he is 'the Minister dealing with the skeleton organisation of the Ministry of Information'. (This 'skeleton organisation' with Sir Stephen George Tallents (1884-1958) as 'Director General Designate' had come into being a few months before the meeting, after the German annexation of the the Sudetenland in 1938, and around seventy staff had already been employed censoring press reports surrounding the Munich Agreement.) [1] + 29pp, foolscap 8vo, on thirty leaves. Complete. In fair condition, with the text (paginated 1-29) on lightly-aged leaves, and the covering page on a loose and worn leaf, with light damage along two edges. The covering page is headed: 'Private and Confidential | Meeting between the Secretary of State for Home Affairs and the Committee of Newspaper Proprietors Association etc. | Home Office, Whitehall, S.W.1. | Wednesday, 29th March, 1939.' At foot of covering page: '(Transcript from the Shorthand Notes of Treasury Reporter)'. The rest of the page lists the twenty-one individuals present, with ten in Sir Samuel Hoare's party, and eleven from the press, with Esmond Harmsworth of the Daily Mail as chairman. The government list begins with: 'Sir Samuel Hoare [(1880-1959), later Viscount Templewood] (Secretary of State) | (in the Chair) | Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd [(1902-1984), later Lord Geoffrey-Lloyd] (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office) | Sir Alexander Maxwell [(1880-1963)] (Permanent Under-Secretary) | Mr. A. S. Hutchinson [Arthur Sydney Hutchinson (1896-1981), later knighted] (Private Secretary to the Secretary of State)'. The press list begins with four from the 'Newspaper Proprietors Association': 'The Hon. Esmond Harmsworth [(1898-1978) of the Daily Mail, later Viscount Rothermere] (Chairman) | Brigadier The Hon. E. F. Lawson [Edward Frederick Lawson (1890-1963) of the Daily Telegraph, later Lord Burnham] (Vice Chairman) | Mr. Stanley Bell, Managing Director, Associated Newspapers | Mr. F. J. Cook, General Manager, Daily Herald and People'. The four NPA members are followed by the NPA 'Secretary to the Committee', three from the 'Newspaper Society'; a 'Scottish Daily Newspaper Society' representative; and two from the 'Periodical Trade Press and Weekly Newspaper Proprietors Association'. Hoare begins by giving the 'two or three reasons' why he has been 'anxious to have a meeting of this Committee', the first being that 'the Prime Minister [Neville Chamberlain, of whose appeasement policy Hoare was a leading supporter] has asked me to take over the questions connected with the Ministry of Information on that side of the work of the Press, and also to be the Co-Ordinating Minister for the various other questions that we discussed when you came here about A.R.P. [the Air Raid Precautions Department, Hoare's pet project, begun in 1935], and that you have since discussed with several of the Departments the Ministry of Transport, the Minist.
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