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fighting it singlehanded without an assurance from the British Authorities that someone would have to pay our losses. What the Japanese have suffered through the boycott enforced against them must be enormous. In conversation with the Japanese Consul the other day he informed me that, while the boycott against Japanese goods was improving, that against their shipping was as strenuous as ever. This proves that, while the Chinese may not be entirely prepared to do without Japanese goods they can very well make arrangements to pass their shipping. Our interests in China are perhaps twentyfold more important than those of the Japanese who, despite their heavy subsidies, have been feeling the pinch severely. If that is the position with them how much more severely would it have affected us, and when I have to consider the loss to other interests than our own which we control here, you will understand the necessity for our acting along the line of least resistance unless with a guarantee of financial aid to fight an organization which even the Hongkong Government had to consider when they cancelled some of their banishment orders to avert a boycott of British Goods in Hongkong which was doubtless threatened under instructions from the Self Government Society.
I fully realize that by capitulating to the Self Government Society we are accentuating the difficulties of the future, But if the Chinese Government are unable to enforce obedience to their orders on a Society who are acting illegally, in defiance of good government and explicit orders and contrary at all events, to the spirit of treaties, how impossible is it for a firm to support the strain of a contest with them singlehanded and with only moral support to assist them in gaining a victory which, after all, might only be on paper
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