286
Memo. for H.S. The Major Gent Com! :-
Unauthorized persons have at times been seen on & about the Works; as soon as observed they have been ordered off in accordance with instructions issued by my predecessor, Colonel Walker.
A good many of the works can be looked into from higher ground at a moderate distance, & a person provided with a telescope could see in this way a great deal of what was going on.
At the same time persons possessed of necessary knowledge & skill could certainly obtain much valuable information from a close inspection which they could not obtain so well from an outside view, & this would be especially the case as the works draw towards completion & the arrangements for Mounting & serving the guns & their limits of range, etc., can be seen. For the most part, however, the works here are only now approaching the state in which information could be acquired. Lyemun is the only instance in which Works of first importance have until now reached that stage & there has been a guard there for some time. A much more serious source of danger is in my opinion the selling of valuable information by the Chinese Contractors & Artisans whom we are forced to employ to carry out the work. We entrust these men with almost every particular of the work done; they are quite clever enough to give tolerably full information to the effects of Foreign Powers, & many of them would assuredly do so could they make thereby considerable profit if they sold it.
We have certainly not hitherto possessed the necessary means for effectually excluding strangers from the Works; our N.C.O.s & men employed on them do so as far as they can, but they are not there out of working hours or on Sundays. Many of the Works are in Batteries, of which some are eventually enclosed by an iron fence; & at Lyemun Redoubt for instance, which is enclosed by a ditch, the ditch has only just been far completed to form a barrier. Under these circumstances a great many men would have been required to guard the Works at first; as they approach completion, when precautions become necessary, fewer men of course are needed as there are fewer open points of access.
Suffice it...