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CHAN KIT-CHENG
had, according to Hopkins, urged Britain on more than one occasion to give up Hong Kong as a gesture of “good will”. To this suggestion Eden, who had originally objected to agreeing to the return of the New Territories on terms after the war in connection with the extraterritoriality negotiations with China but eventually bowed to the majority opinion of the Foreign Office, returned a cold shoulder.41
Britain's attitude regarding Hong Kong steadily stiffened in the course of 1943. She talked less and less about returning the colony on terms. It was partly because pressure from China decreased markedly since the beginning of the year, presumably because she assumed the retrocession of Hong Kong as a matter of course judging from Britain's behaviour in the extraterritoriality negotiations and at the Institute of Pacific Relations' Conference. More significantly, perhaps, Britain became increasingly confident in her relations with the United States and China with the improvement in the European war situation. By the end of the year a final Allied victory in Europe was no longer seriously in doubt.42
It was under such circumstances that Stanley Hornbeck's visit to London, as a return gesture to Ashley Clarke's visit to Washington the previous year, took place in November 1943. Hornbeck spent much of his time in London on consultation with the Foreign Office and other offices concerned with Far Eastern affairs. At the final conference at which most interested British officials were present, Hornbeck, “entirely on his own responsibility”,43 remarked as follows: "I felt that we had covered much ground and had explored a good many subjects, [but] there was one additional matter to which we perhaps might need, not at the moment but as the situation unfolded, to give thought. That matter was ... the future of Hong Kong." "The effect was electrifying", observed Hornbeck. He immediately regretted it: "I had had no thought of injecting a discordant note. I felt at once that discretion in that context would be the better part of valour.”44
Hornbeck's regret came too late. That very evening the British arranged that he would, before his departure for home, call on Churchill the following morning. At the meeting Hornbeck received a long and emphatic lecture from the Prime Minister on Hong Kong: "What about Hong Kong? I will tell you. [The rest retold in Hornbeck's words] He then described the acquisition by Great
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