LIAISON WITH ALLIED GOVERNMENTS I79 



cerning the distribution which had been estabHshed for each category of 

 report. The reports were then forwarded to England through British mail 

 channels and distributed by the Ministry of Production to the other Min- 

 istries. 



The duties of the reorganized London Liaison Office were much more 

 general in nature than those of its predecessor. Liaison consisting of per- 

 sonal contacts with research groups was of necessity largely discontinued 

 for lack of staff. The general trend of British postwar research policies 

 was carefully followed and the Ofi&ce was supplied with similar informa- 

 tion from this country for dissemination to interested British agencies. 

 One problem which occupied a large part of the time of the staff members 

 of the London OfiEce was the question of declassification and publication 

 of the scientific information which had been gathered in the two coun- 

 tries during the war. The London Office also continued to collect the re- 

 ports of the British Ministries and to forward these to the Liaison Of&ce in 

 Washington, until the last of the OSRD London personnel were trans- 

 ferred to the Navy on March i, 1946. 



While the operations of the Washington Liaison Office and the London 

 Mission serviced CMR as well as NDRC, the former were on a much 

 smaller scale than the latter. It was in the medical field, however, that the 

 only exchange of information with the U.S.S.R. was carried on by OSRD. 

 Medical liaison is discussed in Chapter VII, which deals with CMR. 



The Liaison Office after V-E Day 



After V-E Day plans were immediately put in operation for the closing 

 of the branch laboratories in England and the advance service base in 

 France. The former activities were closed around the 15th of June and 

 the Paris branch was closed on June 30, 1945. The London Mission was 

 officially closed late in July 1945, although its liaison activities were main- 

 tained by the London Liaison Office until March i, 1946. By the middle 

 of the summer, 1945, travel activities in an eastern direction had nearly 

 ceased, although travel to the Pacific had shown a slight increase. Most of 

 the OSRD personnel stationed in Europe had been returned to the United 

 States by the first of August. At that time the curtailment in the research 

 activities and the number of contracts being maintained in an active con- 

 dition by OSRD led to the decision to close the New York branch of the 

 Liaison Office on September i, 1945. Group A ceased its distribution ac- 

 tivities and began to call in the reports it had distributed. At about the same 

 time, the British Reports Section called for the return of British reports 

 from contractors who had received them at the request of the divisions di- 

 recting their work. 



The lack of a subject index to British reports had not been particularly 



