COPY.
07.
Sir.
GOVERNMENT HOUSE,
HONGKONG.
May 3rd, 1928.
41
I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your
letter No. 161, dated 26th April, 1928, covering a commuNÁ --
cation from the Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, Canton,
on the subject of the appointment of a Superintendent of
the Chinese Telegraph Office in Hong Kong.
2. In reply I have to request you to be good enough to
remind Mr. Chu Chae-hsin (
) that the arrangement
made at the Conference in Canton on the 10th March was that
I was prepared to consider nomination by the Canton Govern-
ment of a Commercial Agent to take charge of the Chinese
Telegraph Office in Hong Kong, on the condition (among
other conditions) that the nominee should be in fact a mer-
chant and not an official. The English title for the
Superintendent which I suggested at the Cenference - "Com- mercial Agent in charge of the Chinese Telegraph Office in
Hong Kong embodied this essential provision, and it has
consistently been made clear in all later correspondence
that I am not prepared to carry the concession any further.
3. The translation of the title as maggested by the
Canton Government effects a radical alteration of its
meaning and so far from giving the office a neutral and
commercial character and removing it from the arena of
party centrel, which was the object I had in view, it actually accentuates the undesirable features of the exis-
ting system.
I, therefore, find it impossible to accept the sug-
gested translation: and in view of the attitude of the
Canton/