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Mr.Wellesley of the Foreign Office
came to see me about the Governorship of
Hong Kon5. The Foreign Office have, as we
know, been greatly perturbed by the action of
Sir R. Stubbs with regard to Sun Yat Sen.
The Foreign Office, he said, would like us
whenever we were going to appoint a Governor
of Hong Kong to consult them and they were
quite willing in return to submit any name
for the Consul General appointment at Canton
to us.
I pointed out to him that it was
extremely unlikely that the Foreign Office
would know anything about the man whom we
proposed to appoint to Hong Kong inasmuch as he would probably come from the other end of
the world, nor did I think that a promise to
submit our appointments to the Foreign Office
should be entertained. I said, however,
that if I were still here when the vacancy
next occurs I would be quite willing to
communicate privately with the Foreign Office
before an appointment was made.
H.L.
23/9/24.