13
This Document in the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Governinent, and should be
returned to the Foreign Office if not required for officia¡ uss.]
CHINA,
Cypher telegram to Mr. O'Malley, (Peking).
No. 401.
Foreign Office, 5.30 p.m. 22nd December 1926.
127
Your telegrams Nos. 550 and 531 (of December 18th;
statement of British policy in China).
I was about to approve the action reported in your
telegrams Nos. 518, 519, 525, and 526 and the course pro- posed in your telegram No.522,but realise from these
later telegrams that immediate action was necessary. You
did rightly in communicating the text of the memorandum to your colleagues. I approve your action in so doing and would take this opportunity of expressing my appreciation of the ability and resolution with which you have handled
negotiations regarding Washington surtaxes.
His Majesty's representative at the capitals of the eleven Washington Powers are being instructed to communi-
cate to the goverments to which they are respectively
accredited the text of part 2 of my telegram No.31 to
Shanghai as amended by my telegram No.13 to Mr. Lampson
at Hankow, together with its annex. Copies will also be
handed to such representatives of those Powers in London
as ask for them.
In order to comply in full with the spirit of our
obligations under Article 7 of the Washington treaty and
to give the Powers reasonable time for consideration of
our proposals, I intend to defer publication of the text
of this document for the present, but I should feel free
of all obligation if my forbearance is followed by such
intrigues
Prade