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Officer but have been unable to do so, and the only person who could be obtained from the Consular service was a
Student Interpreter.
Even the post of Senior District Officer is not one which a good officer would be willing to accept for more then a few years, as he would feel that he was jeopardising his prospects in his own service by being side- tracked at Weihaiwei and the salary is not high enough to
tempt him to take the risk.
59.
60.
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On the other hend the service is too small and the present scale of salaries too low to offer a life- career. Even if it were understood that the Senior District Officer would have a special claim to favourable considerat- -ion for the post of Commissioner an arrangement which I would deprecate the prospects are too indefinite to be attractive to a young man entering the Colonial Service.
The only method which I can suggest for providing for the future is to increase the salaries of these posts so as to obtain men who will be prepared to spend their whole working lives in Weihaiwei. In order to induce officers to do so, it seems to me that it will be necessary that they should be assured from the first that efficient service will enable them to count for a certainty upon rising to a reasonable salary without being dependent for promotion on the accident of the occurrence of vacancies, I do not think that the maximum salary can be placed at less than £1,000 a year, if men of a suitable class are to be obtained, and I suggest, therefore, that the District Officers should be paid £500 a year rising by annual
If this method is increments of £25 to £1,000 a year. adopted, I think that it will not be necessary in the first instance to appoint the third District Officer whom I have suggested on that selary. It would be sufficient to select a Cadet at the next Civil Service examination and to pay him £350 a year until he has passed his examinations, when
he