27th June, 1929
PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL
My dear Prime Minister,
At the end of last week Dr. Orr [1] was in town and during lunch with him he told me that he had recently been discussing the next Imperial Conference with the Lord Provost of Aberdeen and with several other important local worthies. The Lord Provost had said that Aberdeen would like to have the opportunity of presenting the Freedom of the City to you.
Orr told me that Aberdeen is very jealous in regard to such matters and that the presentation of the Freedom of the City does not occur more frequently than once in two or three years. Orr also indicated that if you consented to receive the Freedom of the City, he had been given to understand that the University would also like to confer an Honorary Degree.
It seems to me that the cooperation between C.S.I.R. and the Waite Institute in Australia and the Empire Marketing Board and the Rowett Institute at Aberdeen would render this suggestion peculiarly appropriate and you would have an amazingly good case on which to base an important speech from a satisfactory platform.
I should, therefore, be very glad if you would let me have an indication that the proposals outlined above would be satisfactory from your point of view.
Yours sincerely, F. L. MCDOUGALL
_1 J. B. Orr, Director of the Rowett Institute for Research in Animal Nutrition, Aberdeen.
_
__