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children cannot be kept in the Far East after a certain
age without danger to their bodily and mental health. I
do not overlook the fact that the new rent-allowance rules
18445/4800 18449 see my Confidential despatch of 25th August, 1926) apply
to bachelors, but that application is merely an inevitable and equitable extension of a rule primarily designed for
the assistance of the separated husband.
6.
The main argument of the petitioners seems
to be that a Cadet should receive a salary sufficient for
his support as a married man as soon as he becomes a passed
Cadet. It may be admitted without argument that a married
officer with the status of a Cadet cannot, even if he has
no family, and with all the privileges in the matter of
exchange and rent, live here on less than £550 per annum.
But I do not consider that a cadet has any right to expect
that the Colony shall enable him to support a wife before
he has been six years in its service, and I find that the
Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation is even more
drastic in its rules, in that it refuses to allow members
of its European staff to marry before they have completed ten years foreign service, which in practice means that the marrying age is not under 31. It is unlikely that any of
these officers, had he adopted one of the learned professions
instead of joining the Civil Service would have been earning
an income which would have supported him as a married man
under six years.
7.
Even if on general grounds such as the
increase in the cost of living or the necessity for making
the service more attractive to candidates, I had been disposed to support some financial concessions, I could not at the present juncture have done so, because similar
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applications