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IMPORTANT
SECRET
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CYPHER
From:
Governor, Hong Kong
To:
Consul-General, Canton (13)
Dated: 10th February, 1939.
208
Your telegram 34.
Action taken here was in conformity with the
terms of my telegram No.6 to Secretary of State repeated
to you as No.1 and presumably communicated to your
Japanese colleague.
While this Government has every wish to support
you in your endeavours to re-open the Pearl River to
trade it feels bound to point out that the restrictions
in Hong Kong about which the Japanese are complaining
are restrictions which are imposed alike on British trading
vessels and on those of all foreign States having business
here. All we ask in the Pearl River is to exercise our
normal and treaty rights and while we are fully prepared to
allow in Hong Kong any State to exercise its normal and
customary rights, we cannot be expected to grant to the Japanese more than their rights here in exchange for less than
our rights there.
In International Law even men-of-war, and a
fortiori trading vessels on Government Charter cannot do
what they like in foreign waters. "They are expected to
comply voluntarily with the laws of the littoral States
with regard to order in the ports, the places for casting
anchor, sanitation and quarantine, customs, and the like"
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