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which was appointed by Sir William Gascoigne to recommend what steps should be taken to celebrate the Coronation of Their Majesties the King and Queen, were certainly under the impression when they advised that out of the land to be released from Military Reservation at Kowloon a large area should be devoted to a Public Park to be called the 'King's Park' in commemoration of the Coronation, that the negotiations then pending for extinguishing the rights of the War Department over the land would be brought to a successful settlement by arrangement between the Colonial Government and the War Department.
It never entered into their calculations that it would be necessary for the Colony to purchase the land for the Park, and I have no hesitation in saying that they would have scouted as preposterous any suggestion to purchase the land necessary for the Park. Nor would the Colonial Government have felt justified in the then state of the finances of the Colony in entertaining any such proposition had it been made. I opine that your predecessor would have been of the same opinion, for in his telegram sanctioning the opening of the Park he directed that as little expenditure as possible should be incurred in laying out the area. It is indeed anomalous that the Colonial Government should be forbidden to spend money on developing a Park for the purchase of which it is now asked to pay nearly half a million dollars.
The Committee, the Community, the Colonial Government, and the local Military Authorities seem to have
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viewed the matter in this light. They knew that negotiations were in progress for