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disposed to this much-discussed agreement, and I am in-
olined to share the opinion of His Excellency the Governor
that the best solution may be to drop it and to start a-
fresh to evolve a scheme on lines of mutual co-operation
and assistance, designed with the sole object of the pre-
vention of smuggling and the protection of China's reven-
ues. It is, however, vain to hope for success in this de-
licate task if it be made a matter of bargaining or approach-
ed in any spirit of recrimination over past differences of
opinion, or a desire to apportion in advance the blame for
eventual failure. Only a real desire on both sides to
aohieve the desired object, and an unwavering will to reach
an agreement, can give results.
6. In my recent interviews and correspondence with
Mr. Maze, I have detected a slight tendency on his part to
adopt what I can only describe as a hectoring attitude to-
wards this question.
Granted that Mr. Maze feels with some
Justice that China has strong grounds for complaint in the
fact that the Hong Kong Government have hitherto failed to
fulfil their definite obligations to assist China to protect
her revenues, and that he is stung by the attitude of in-
difference which he knows to have been adopted by the British
commercial community at Shanghai towards the prospect of
failure to come to any agreement to satisfy the Chinese de-
mand for the adoption of measures to put an end to the smug-
gling, it seems to me that he is inclined to take a line
that can only tend to stiffen the resistance of the Hong
Kong Government and community to the granting of what they
have always regarded as an exceptional concession demanding
exceptional
...