This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government, and should be
returned to the Foreign Office if not required for official use.]
Decypher.
Mr. Lampson.
(Siakwan).
D.
7.30 p.m.
E. 10.30 p.m.
December 22nd, 1926.
December 22nd, 1926,
December 22nd, 1926.
No. 28.
121
My preceding telegrams have given general purport
of my conversations with Chen and I propose in this
telegram to give appreciation of situation as I so far
see it.
My general feeling is that Chen personally has no particular animosity to us but: (a) he is not e strong
man and it is too early to judge.
(b) He realises fully weakness of our position vis-à-vis labour agitation etc., and is prepared to
use weapon to drive a hard bargain with us. (c) At
the same time he realised, what I gather from his own
statement his more extreme colleagues do not,
danger of letting things go too far and getting out of
control and the advantages of reaching some early
settlement with us,
I accordingly deduce from above that he genuinely
desires to settle with us, hence his anxiety late on December 17th (see my telegram No. 25) that by no
word or deed should there be the slightest suggestion
that our conversations would not continue. But
whether he could ever bring himself or his colleagues
to offer aven reasonable terms from our point of view
is very doubtful. Anyhow a hopeful sign to my mind is that he wants to go on talking to us, and I think
we should encourage this as much as possible. Even
if
ade