Mr. Coie
CONFIDENTIAL
I think before the attached papers are submitted to Sir L. Monson you should see the minutes exchanged below between Mr. Carter and members of the Administration on which I have the following comments.
2. It would appear that we have now reached agreement on the draft of a letter to the Governor of Hong Kong save on one point. This relates to paragraph 5 of the draft. The amendments to the third sentence of this paragraph, which have been made in a hand which is not identifiably belonging to any of those people who have minuted in manuscript, not only make it clear that we are desperately short and under-strength in Grade 5A (which I accept) but that we "would not be able to do any better in Grade 7A or 8" the argument being added that a large proportion of these junior officers are on essential training of one sort or another. At the meeting presided over by Sir L. Monson at which Mr. Larmour and Mr. Martin were present I agree that the Administration made clear that Grade 5 officers would be difficult to find, but it seems to me that the draft now goes considerably further than anything Mr. Larmour said either in this respect and certainly in relation to the more junior officers. As I said at the meeting I can think of few places where in a short period of time a junior officer of the Diplomatic Service could learn more about commercial and tariff questions as by a period of secondment to the Commerce and Industry Department of the Hong Kong Government where he might well have more responsibility than he would in a F.C.0. Department. I would hope therefore that you would agree that at this stage in the corres- pondence we should not exclude utterly the possibility, if not now then at a later stage, of being able to let Hong Kong have Administrative Grade officers and not only the Executive Grade officers which at present the draft offers. May we have a return
at least to the original wording of the draft?
3. There are undoubtedly going to be difficulties about organising an exchange of the kind which the Governor has suggested. These will emerge more clearly as we discuss the situation. The tax problem which is dealt with in paragraph 7 (2) of the draft will be an extremely difficult one, as is clear from minutes by members of the Administration, but it should not be beyond the wit of man to resolve it and I hope that we need not accept Mr. Quantrill's defeat- ist conclusion. We should not look at this question in such a way that the problems stick out too starkly. To my mind there would be very considerable advantage in the long term of having the few Diplomatic Service officers who have served within the Hong Kong Government (or another Colonial Government) and who would thus be available at a later stage to serve in one of the Departments of the
/F.C.O.
CONFIDENTIAL