2.
510m
82769
145
1932. On the other hand if the Company's statement was
incorrect and that of the Foreign Office correct it seemed to
follow that the machines could only have been exported from the
United Kingdom with the approval of the Board of Trade and
consequently with the authority of the Chinese Minister if
that were a condition precedent to the approval of the Board.
2. Further it would have been possible though inconvenient
for the Company to remove these warlike fittings before the
machines left Hong Kong, in which case the position would have
become as described by Sir Miles Lampson in the final paragraph
of his despatch to the Foreign Office No.1494(93/10) dated the
9th October, 1931, and relating to the exportation from Hong
Kong to Canton of three Armstrong Whitworth Aeroplanes.
circumstances it did not appear to the Officer Administering
the Government necessary to insist on the Company's having
recourse to this subterfuge.
3.
In the
Moreover the Barcelona Convention and Statute on
freedom of transit has an important bearing on this matter.
Under Article 1 of the Statute goods shall be deemed to be "in
transit" across territory under the sovereignty or authority of
one of the contracting states when the passage across such
territory with or without transhipment, warehousing, breaking
bulk or changing the mode of transport is only a portion of a
complete journey beginning and terminating beyond the frontier
of the state across whose territory the transit takes place.
It is true that Article 5 allows an exemption in
favour of goods of a kind which might be prejudicial to the
state through which they pass, also to goods, and in particular
arms, the restriction of which may be the subject of general
International Conventions, but the transit of arms or armed
aeroplanes through Hong Kong does not constitute any danger to
the Colony, and the only International Convention relating to