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7.
This raises the question whether the local Communists are capable of sustained and vigorous enough action to over- extend and exhaust the security forces, By themselves they probably are not. But the perennial danger especially in. Kowloon and parts of Hong Kong Ialand, is that any rumpus draws a crowd and any crowd can quickly become a mob. Communists have in fact used this technique already (paragraph 3) and could revert to it again. If they did so systematically and on a wide scale, we would need to take very tough measures to avoid being swamped.
The
8. To deal successfully with all this, it will be crucial to maintain general public confidence (which task will get more difficult the longer the crisis lasts), and particularly the confidence and morale of the police. We must continue to show firmness and steadiness here, backed by reaffirmations of H.M.G.'s support for the Hong Kong Government's measures (this latter is vital). We must strive to retain the initiative in Hong Kong, which we have now secured, to help to show that public confidence in us is not misplaced. We must be prepared to counter-attack selectively, taking care to avoid so far as possible direct challenges to the Peking Government of a sort that would oblige them to intervene more actively,
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