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(Pr02)
period Destroyers, or at any rate Gunboats (some of which mounted 6-inch guns) would be available to deal with field guns. He was not prepared to state definitely tht Hankow could be held during the period of low water, but, at the request of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, he undertook that the subject should be examined further by the Committee of Chiefs of
Staff.
The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs informed the Cabinet that he had received information from Sir Miles Lampson to the effect that copies of two of the Minister's despatches to the Foreign Office, as well as of his telegrams of British Consuls, had been discovered among the Soviet archives at Peking
The leakage was being investi- recently seized by Chang Tso-lin. gated. On the subject of sanctions he read to the Cabinet a telegram he had sent on the previous day to Sir Miles Lampson favouring the re-occupation of the Hankow Concession and its return to British administration, and asking for his opinion on This telegram various aspects of this proposal (Appendix 111).
had been sent before Sir Austen Chamberlain had seen the Third Report of the Chiefs of Staff on Sanctions or the telegram of
While his telegram the Naval Commander-in-Chief in Appendix II. indicated the trend of his own views, the Secretary of State felt bound to inform the Cabinet that Sir Charles Addis, the former Chairman of the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank and a great authority on China, was a strong partisan of the policy of patience hitherto pursued by His Majesty's Government, and, although unaware that the project was seriously under consideration, had expressed disapproval of the proposal to re-occupy the Hankow Concession. Sir Austen Chamberlain wished to reserve his own final opinion until he had heard from sir wiles Lampson and had a little more information as to the practicability of holding the Concession
The precise position in regard during the period of low river.
to the Nanking demands at the present moment was that the Ministers at Peking were considering the despatch of a further Note to Eugene Chen. it was certain that the United States
would