questions over appointments, accommodation, links to the media and the relationship with other government departments had been left unresolved. The confusion had been made worse by tensions between the shadow MOI and the Foreign Office News Department. This tension spilled over into the Committee for Imperial Defence which considered proposals to abandon plans for the Ministry of Information. Tallents left his post as Director General Designate on 2 January 1939 (with responsibility for the MOI assumed by the Home Office). Planning efforts would increase again after Nazi troops moved into Prague on 15 March 1939 (German occupation of Czechoslovakia). The British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain publicly announced his government's intentions for the MOI in a parliamentary speech on 15 June 1939. Home Office officials were privately given until 31 December 1939 to complete their plans. The Phoney War, 1939–40 The Ministry of Information (MOI) was formed on 4 September 1939, the day after Britain's declaration of war, and Lord Macmillan was sworn in as its first minister on 5 September 1939. The MOI's headquarters were housed within the University of London's Senate House and would remain there for the rest of the war. The MOI was initially organised in four groups. A "Press Relations" group was responsible for both the issue of news and censorship. A "Publicity Users" group (split into "foreign" and "home" sections) was responsible for propaganda policy. A "Publicity Producers" group (split according to media) was responsible for design and production. These were overseen by a "Co-ordination and Intelligence" group responsible for administration. This structure had only been finalised in May–June 1940 and senior officials were often unsure about their responsibilities. The press reacted negatively to the MOI. Initial confusion between the MOI and service departments led to accusations that the MOI was delaying access to the news, and a newspaper campaign against censorship was started. Other commentators pointed to the ministry's large staff and satirised it as ineffective and out of touch. The MOI's first publicity campaign also misfired with a poster bearing the message "Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution, Will Bring Us Victory" criticised for appearing class-bound. These factors led to political scrutiny and resulted in the removal of the Press Relations Group on 9 October 1939 (which became an autonomous Press and Censorship Bureau) and an announcement on 25 October 1939 that the MOI's staff was to be cut by a third. Lord