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additional reason for the removal of the Colonial Magazine from its present site, a subject discussed in the correspondence accompanying the latest revision of the Defence Scheme at present under consideration by the Colonial Defence Committee; but it does not appear that anything would be gained by refusing to accept in the Magazine ammunition belonging to a foreign navy, when it would be necessary to admit explosives belonging to a foreign liner, any one of whose crew or officers might be a foreign intelligence agent.
6. The Colonial Defence Committee do not gather that any other special circum- stances exist which might render it advisable to refuse or limit the facilities asked for by the French Consul. On this assumption the case seems to them to fall within the general rule advocated by them in paragraph 5 of their Memorandum, No. 186 M, already quoted, in the following terms:-
"The great principle to be kept in view is to give foreigners as much hospitality as is consistent with the safety of the Colony. It would be in the highest degree impolitic by lessening the facilities at our coaling stations to encourage foreign Powers in establishing new coaling stations of their own, or to provoke a policy of retaliation from which His Majesty's ships would be the first to suffer."
The Committee can conceive circumstances in which the practice by foreign navies of using British fortified ports as depôts for their warlike stores might prove to our advantage on outbreak of war. Such a use of the port of Hong Kong is preferable from the British point of view to the development of facilities at the neighbouring Portuguese station of Macao, where France has recently obtained leave to establish a sanatorium.
(Signed)
J. E. CLAUSON, Secretary,
Colonial Defence Committee.
November 16, 1901.
Approved by tops.
mi
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Wo. 266/Hong Kong / 40
6/12/01.
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