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.
CHINA
Cyrher telegram to Sir M. Lampson, (Peking).
Foreign Office, 28th April, 1927. 7 p.m.
No. 333.
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8
2.18
IMMEDIATE.
My telegram No. 350 was on the point of
despatch when I received your No. 791.
His Majesty's Government must reconsider
their provisional approval of the reoccupation of Hankow concession in light of the views expressed
by you but I shall nevertheless be glad to have
your answers to the questions which I had put.
I must confess that I do not understand your
preference for destruction of arsenal as a sanction. If seems to me that the recccupation of concession with a suitable declaration of our reasons and policy is at once (a) far more effective and (b) less likely to involve actual engagement of armed forces and that (c) if firing should unfortunately be necessary it is less likely that inocent civilian population will suffer.
In the constantly changing conditions of the Chinese military situation is it not at least possibl that Hankow may presently be in possession of either the Northern forces or of the Nanking Government and might not the destruction of the arsenal therefore be a blow at one of the more friendly elements rather than at the Bolshevised section of Nationalists who were in fact responsible for the Nanking outrages.
Repeat to Shanghel for Commander-in-Chief.