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promotion and increases of pay. Brilliance and initiative are not requisite. In fact, unless well controlled they are a definite handicap. It is fatal to the career of the young official if events prove he was right where his senior was wrong. He will soon be stowed away on some remote shelf. All that is required of him is that he shall answer "Yes" at proper intervals; and not advance new ideas, or disturb the even tenor of the way of his superiors.
Another unhappy manifestation of colonial administration was seen in 1940, when the Japanese menace caused the authorities to issue an order to British women to leave the colony. You would have thought that the wives of colonial officials would have been proud to set an example. But not at all. The majority of the female relatives of Hongkong administrators used their influence to have themselves declared indispensable in order that they might stay in the colony. They wangled jobs as nurses, secretaries, and so on, while the less fortunate — as it then appeared — wives of the commercial community, who were not in a position to pull strings, were shipped out to Australia and other places. It naturally produced a lot of ill-feeling, but not, so far as I am aware, any Colonial Office enquiry.
The police force in Hongkong consisted of 14 British officers, 255 British other ranks, and 803 Sikh and 1022 Chinese constables. Despite its heterogeneous composition the force was quite efficient. The wealth of Hongkong attracts evil-doers from China, which has its full share of the criminal element. After decades of civil war they are usually well enough armed; but in Hongkong the statistics of serious crime, and particularly of malefactors brought to book, compare quite favourably with, for instance, those for Kentucky.
Chinese of the lower classes generally wear a short jacket, while Chinese of the gentle class wear a long gown buttoning up the side and reaching down to the ankles. Chinese gun-men also invariably wear long gowns, I suppose, the easier to hide their weapons. They are often of sleek appearance, but there seems to be a look about them which makes them easy to recognise. When I was staying at the Gloucester Hotel I noticed there were usually one or two long-gowned Chinese in the hallway outside my room. I asked my Chinese boy who these men were and he told me that in the bedroom on one side of me I had Mr. Tu Yuen Seng, and on the other side Mr. Wang Shao Lai. They were the chiefs of the Green and Red "Tongs"