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knowledge where the Anti-Japanese Boycott Association at Changchow were discovered to be smuggling dutiable articles from Formosa. The shipping companies feel that they are peculiarly vulnerable and that fines are being levied on them with no regard to justice, but with the object of inducing them to use such influence as they may possess with the Hong Kong Government to secure the establishment of an elaborate and costly preventive service, which shall work on behalf of the Chinese Customs, and be, in effect, ancillary to them. They would not, I think, be averse to some improved method of control of outward cargoes, if only to relieve them of the expense and trouble to which they are being put at present, but they make no secret of the fact that they feel that they are in the meanwhile being victimised, and that the blame for this state of affairs rests with the higher authorities of
the Customs.
I have, etc.,
(Signed) E.W.P. Mills.
Consul.