necessary to provide permanent Barrack and Hospital accommodation for the amazing number of 150 Officers and
2500 Rank and File,
requiring altogether as he states "at least 8 times the extent of Building now 'Existing'". As thirty acres of the most eligible land at Kowloon have been occupied by the Military down to the taking up of every suitable site for a Naval Hospital, as we have recently seen, and to the great pecuniary loss of the Colony by preventing the sale of land at a time when purchasers were
ready to give large sums for suitable building sites there, it becomes a matter of serious inquiry
whether
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whether Her Majesty's Government has the least intention of quartering in Hong Kong and Kowloon the prodigious
Military force which might be
accommodated on the extensive tracts reserved for the use of the War Department.
22. It seems clear that the policy of Her Majesty's Government is tending quite the other way, and in any case I sincerely hope that if further Barracks or Hospitals are to be built, some healthier place may be found than in the very lap and
hollow of the mountain where the good land is, of which the War
Department would, according to
Colonel