81
He said that he knew that and thought we could pick
the ones we wanted. He added that though his name was on
the list he himself gravely doubted the wisdom in the
present chaos of moving further for the moment.
I have seen Ting since my retum to Peking and he
is in fact leaving for Wei-hai-wei immediately: he was
more than ever ready to stand down. He on his part was very insistent that Nanking govemment having shown this
direct interest in the question, it was most desirable
for future Anglo-Chinese relations that we should not
miss this opportunity to secure their genuine co-opera- tion: even if Nanking govemment fell we could always
point to this demonstration of our goodwill to China
as a whole.
There is pssibly something in this. At
the same time I am averse to proceeding too fast for the
present.
The main quest ion, namely whether we adhere to
our present policy regarding the use of Indemnity Fund
still remains open and I do not consider that we should
decide one way or the other until the political situation
is less obscure. We might proceed for the present as proposed in last sentence of last paragraph of your
telegram No. 56 to me in Shanghai and I should be inclined
to ask Hushi to sound Tsai Wang Chung-hui and either of the last two as to serving on provisional committee.
Yen, whom I have consulted, approves of
Do you agree?
list, but I would omit Wu and Chow Pei-chen.
He thinks that the list may be acceptable to
present Cabinet as Wang and himself are personal friends
of Pan-fu.
the result.
He is sounding latter and will let me
Mem while it would help to know what
kow
prospect