"Sir Oswyn Murray, Secretary of the Admiralty for nearly twenty years from 1917, once intervened diplomatically to prevent what might have been a serious quarrel between Sir Eric Geddes [First Lord of the Admiralty] and Douglas Brownrigg, the Chief Naval Censor. Sir Eric had written a fierce letter to Sir Douglas, and the difficulty was to get him to accept it without taking offence. So Murray and Edward Packe, Sir Douglas's private secretary, agreed that the note should be delivered when Sir Douglas was in Murray's room. Its effect was exactly what had been anticipated. Flinging the note on the table with the demand that they should 'read that' Sir Douglas declared that he would never darken the doors of the Admiralty again.
"'Oh, but you're quite wrong,' insisted his friends after reading the note, 'you don't understand the First Lord; this is positively gracious, coming from him, you should see his usual style; compared to that it is almost abject!'
"The strategy had the desired effect and Sir Douglass was pacified."
Sources
Lady Murray, The Making of a Civil Servant
