This Dogument is the Property of His Britannic Majesty & Government, and should be returned to the Foreign Office if not required for official use.?
7/2/110.)
CHINA.
444
Cypher telegram to Sir R. Macleay (Peking).
Foreign Office. 31st December, 1925, 10,0 a.m.
No. 381.
Your telegram No. 543,
While fully realizing the dangers of the present situation and the possibility of still more serious developments, I an satisfied that you have correctly appreciated the causes of Sir Francis Aglen's panic and that we should avoid being stampeded by him into hastily adopting expedients which may postpone but will certainly aggravate the dangers with which we are threatened. It should be quite easy for the government to obtain enough money for current expences from customs revenues and you should therefore dis-
courage all proposals for continuing famine relief surtaxes or advances by berks or temporary foreign control.
The suggestion that a shadowy central government in Peking, incapable of functioning as a government
anywhere else in China, should be bolstered up with
foreign loans for the sole purpose of signing a
treaty with the foreign powers binding the whole of
China is a reductio ad absurdum of the policy of
intervention in China's domestic affairs (mainly in
the interests of foreign lenders) which has grown
up since the revolution of 1911, and of which the
principal feature is control of the Chinese customs
revenues
I