The editors are not quite sure. As they observe straight-facedly and with considerable understatement, ‘this was scarcely a likely appointment under all the circumstances ... ‘but within a mere six weeks this clerk was in London as Australian liaison officer attached to the British Foreign Office. Not only that, he took letters of introduction from the Prime Minister to Stanley Baldwin and the most eminent members of the British Civil Service, and was established in some style in the Cabinet Secretariat with no less a personage than Sir Maurice Hankey, the secretary to the Cabinet.

It is, then, unclear why Bruce chose Casey for the most delicate task entrusted to him, but the editors venture that Casey and Bruce both personified a tradition which had it that men of substance should serve the common weal. Whether it was, or is, a practice which should survive, as it has apparently in the United States, and whether the ‘common weal’ is in fact best served by it, is to say the least highly questionable: men of substance may possibly be not indifferent about looking after their own interests and those of their cronies.

Certainly Bruce had a most assiduous agent at his beck and call. Casey rapidly expanded his duties from concern with foreign policy. He came to keep up a barrage of letters and cables which enabled his master in Melbourne to know what was what and who was who in the circles which revolved around the City of London and the pronouncements of the Bank of England as politicians such as Bruce went full steam ahead with programmes of borrowing British money to develop Australia and the businesses which made the roads and bridges and houses and so on of the booming twenties.

Part of Casey’s apparent success lay in his ability to inspire confidence in people, and especially the crucially important Hankey. Our man in London attended the right dinner parties, was invited to the homes of the right people, and had privileged access to the most important policy documents. Generally, he was the perfect agent and what is more, he did not even have a cover which might be blown. Or did he? Well, when Mr Charlton, the leader of the Opposition in Australia, raised questions about Casey, Mr Bruce replied loftily that the man did not convey communications to the British government or have authority to express Australian policy.

Mr Bruce was lying: Casey did a good deal of that sort of thing. How could the Prime Minister mislead the House? Because Casey’s intelligence reports were directed to the Prime Minister alone, and never filed in the usual way so that later governments of Australia might have their benefit. So much for the common weal. Casey was Bruce’s boy only.

However that may be, R.G. Casey enjoyed his task and being in London. He was youngish, good-looking, alert and always curious about new developments in technology. He was clearly a very good listener, and he crowned his success by marriage to a lady of quality as avidly interested in life as he was himself. It was good to be alive and wealthy in a London which was reviving after the onslaught of the Great War. The information transmitted by Bruce’s man was of all sorts and values, though references to the League of Nations and the hopes it awakened are now more dated, alas, than reference to the Thirty Years’ War, so complete was the destruction of that body.

A typical example of Casey’s intelligence reports came at the very end of 1924 when Bruce cabled his agent to sound out a possible buyer for the Commonwealth Shipping Line, purchased by W.M. Hughes during the war and, according to the editors, in financial difficulty. (They refrain from explaining how and why.)

Casey bounded eagerly into action. The target was Lord Kylsant and, on receipt of the cable on a Saturday night in London, Casey smartly phoned Kylsant in Wales and then caught the night train to Carmarthen, spent Sunday with the noble Lord and returned to headquarters in the metropolis after tea on the Sunday. He cabled Bruce twice in the process – once and formally to the Prime Minister’s office in the presence of Lord Kylsant representing word for word what that individual was prepared to do, and secondly (and discreetly later) to Bruce’s private house informing the Prime Minister of Australia what Casey really thought about the deal and the motives of Lord Kylsant.

Again, in a typical letter Casey noted meeting a person named Berry, am owner of coal mines and chairman of Lysaghts, who made galvanized iron in New South Wales. Casey reported with satisfaction to Bruce how he had answered innumerable questions from the magnate in relation to Australian labour conditions and Berry’s establishment of a factory in Melbourne in which .he had interested himself in his capacity as chairman of Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds.

Casey chattered away. At one stage he noted that the United Kingdom government (‘the story was told to me by a Treasury man’) was blackmailing its late brave ally France by holding huge quantities of French Treasury bills, a scheme said to have been put up to Lloyd George as a last resort to bring France to heel.

Maybe, but spy-masters should wonder about their agents’ sources of information. In the case of Casey, he reported in 1925 that Mussolini was fatally ill and could not survive. The next year he was deceived by a confidence man. Son of an Anglican clergyman, this intriguing individual had evidently been approved to work with British Intelligence during the Great War, and then moved on into the business of touting honours under Mr Lloyd George and subsequent governments, presumably enabling many fathers to know Lloyd George. After such presenting of a form of credential to those with identification problems, he succumbed as an alcoholic in a German prisoner of war camp in France in 1941. It seems a pity, really, for a man of such gifts.

It being the 1920s, naturally Casey was deeply concerned about the revolutionary activities brought to his attention by those in the know. He became a middle-man for cloak and dagger reports, of the utmost secrecy reports, being sent from London spooks to a Major H.E. Jones, represented to be Director of the Investigation Branch in the Attorney-General’s Department. Naturally messages were transmitted in cypher.

Casey’s intelligence also encompassed news about the British ‘Strike Book’, like a War Book (of course)·in which arrangements had been worked out for rendering strike action ineffective, if there were any strike action to be dealt with.

Characteristically, Casey also thought that the case of Guido Baracchi would interest Mr Bruce, they being near-contemporaries at Melbourne Grammar School and Baracchi having betrayed his class by going to the bad and joining (and leaving) the Communist party. Casey, with shock mingled with distaste, concluded that the resignation of Baracchi was related to that person’s conviction that it was all utterly futile.

These reports from Bruce’s agent, then, cover an extremely wide field and form an alert commentary on national and international events of the period as seen from the vantage point of the British politically effective, equipped with the ethical values of Bulldog Drummond. If Bruce’s slogan of ‘men, money and markets’ was one which announced Australia’s attachment to Britain like a limpet on a rock, then Bruce had a mighty useful man at the heart of the Empire. Casey was able to report sturdily after the Australian general election of 1925 that the average man in the United Kingdom had seen it as a straight-out sporting fight between Bruce and a certain rather undefined, but possibly dangerous, Red menace. No wonder Casey was able busily to add that Bruce had a first-rate press in Britain – except in certain unimportant and peevish organs with a low circulation. That’s the stuff to give ’em!

This book has a most fluently written introduction and Casey himself invariably writes and gossips most attractively. There is always an engaging ‘have you heard?’ style about him which reflects a mind ever interested in what is going on.

Bruce found these reports useful, it seems, and that is significant, I guess: on New Year’s Day 1926 while holidaying at Frankston, the Prime Minister wrote to Casey (a rare occurrence) congratulating him on his performance in London and urging him to amplify rather than reduce these private letters. It would be instructive, however, to know more of what use S.M.·Bruce made·of Casey’s intelligence, who benefited and who did not, and how or whether the Prime Minister’s conduct had long term significance.

Incidentally, this file of letters was returned to Casey by Bruce in 1966 and ten years later, just prior to his death, Lord Casey gave permission for their publication.