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regular naval and military forces. It would be worse than
useless if the companies, in order to comply with our
requirements, were obliged to engage local British
unemployed. I would rather have the present aussian
guards than the type of British beachcomber who would
be likely to accept such service at the wages offered.
And the same remarks apply to the Japanese. If men
from the British regular forces are not available I
think that the Aussian community remains the best
recruiting ground for these ships' guards. After all,
in the "Tungchow" case the Russians did their best and
one of the was killed fighting.
8.
It is with the greatest reluctance that I
deprecate any proposal for dealing with this piracy
menace put forward by so eminent an authority as tir
Frederic Dreyer, but I am afraid that if the certificate
schese were, as proposed, on a voluntary basis one of
two things would happen. Our requirements would either
be stiff enough to provide a real protection against
piracy, when the companies would be driven by economic
pressure to ignore them, or else the scheme would prove
inadequate in practice and would merely tend to remove
the responsibility and odius for piracies from the
shipping companies to the department issuing the
certificate. I would not like to place this Consulate-
General in that position. On the other hand there would
be many obstacles in the way of making the scheme
compulsory.
9. There is also the question of such ships as
the Canadian "Empress" liners. They carry Chinese
crows
...