3c all
390
16520
55
27, Onslow Gardens,
Highgate,
5 MAY 141
London, N.
May 4th 1914.
Sir.
I have!
the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your letter No.15,391/1914, intimating that the Governor of Hong Kong had forwarded my application (of 13th February 1914), *reporting at the same time that he had caused you to be
informed that he could not support your application", and
that in consequence Yr Secretary Harcourt had therefore been
unable to approve my application. This unexpected decision
has come upon me as a great surprise, and I feel certain is
due to some misunderstanding, and I now beg your permission to
present my oase as I have all along understood it, in the hope
that my explanation and view of the circumstances may be found
satisfactory, and sufficient to justify sanction being given
for the pensionable personal allowance to be increased to
£120 a year, as referred to in Mr Secretary Harcourt's de-
spatch No.91 of 6th April 1911, in which, as I have regarded
it, it was tacitly agreed that the grant of the second incre-
ment of £50 depended solely upon whether "after a period of
"three years from 1st January 1912 I was still in the same
"position" (i.e. without promotion) as specifically set forth
in that despatch. The despatch certainly includes the words
"I shall be prepared to consider the question of increasing
"this allowance to £120 a year", but I would most respectfully
submit that, read together with the whole despatch and in
conjunction with H.. Sir Frederick Lugard's despatch No.59
of 21st February 1911, and the whole treatment of my original
application of 9th February 1911 in Hong Kong, no other meaning