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trouble is that there are very few ways in which
the Chinese can help us. In the last war
the only really useful contribution which China
made to the allied cause was the supply of
manual labour for use behind the lines. About
100,000 Chinese coolies were employed by us in
France and other war theatres, and a similar
number by the French. This was undoubtedly a
great saving of British and French man power,
but it has to be remembered that it was effected
in the teeth of the opposition of the Chinese
Government of the time, who threw every
obstacle in the way of the recruiting
organisation until they found that their
disapproval was being successfully ignored.
the event of another war the Powers controlling
the sea would certainly want to draw upon the
Chinese population for labour purposes, and the
acquiescence of the Chinese Government would be
useful. The difficulty would now be to obtain
the best class of labour, which comes from the
North and to ship the men to Europe in the face
of Japanese opposition, which is likely to be
encountered whether Japan remained neutral or
not.
In
I cannot think of any other way in which the
Chinese Government in their present condition
could be useful to us in a war, except possibly
in the matter of certain raw materials for
munitions such as wolfram. These they would
want in any case to sell to whomever could take
delivery and that in turn would depend on the
policy/
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