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HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.
or will not be adopted, the Annual Budget has traditionally been the occasion for reviewing the whole position, past and prospective, of the Colony.
The Colonial Secretary, in his speech, has referred to "the present unhappy state of the world". With all the incalculable damage to the Colony, actual and potential, as the result of the present Sino-Japanese conflict, I submit that any debate on the general position of the Colony must assume an air of unreality if this subject, so vitally important to the World in general, and the Far East, including Hong Kong, in particular, were to be dismissed with such a passing reference.
I feel sure this Council would welcome a statement from Government as to the position of the Chinese fishing fleets in relation to the present hostilities. The recent statement attributed to the Honourable the Colonial Secretary at an interview, as published in the Press, was, in my submission, hardly reassuring. Is the position this: that Chinese fishermen-many of whom, like their forbears, were born in Hong Kong, and who have been rendering an essential service to the Colony by supplying fish to the local population are to be left to the fate of gun-fire, resulting in loss of life and the destruction of their fishing junks, without any redress, simply because, in pursuit of their lawful avocation, they ventured beyond the territorial waters of the Colony? Is the Colony's fishing industry to cease altogether?
I, of course, accept the position that this Colony must be strictly neutral. But surely there is no such thing as neutrality of conscience? And, surely, no neutrality can prevent either the public, or the Government of Hong Kong, from entertaining feelings of dumbfounded dismay and horror at the indiscriminate slaughter of non-combatants by the Japanese air bombings. As Lord Cranborne, British Under- Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, is reported to have said at Geneva, "words could not express the feeling of profound horror with which news of these raids is received by the whole civilised world.... If this tendency is to continue and to be intensified, can civilisation itself survive?"
Speaking for myself, I find it extremely difficult to concentrate on the Budget figures for the din and cries of woe and helplessness which seem to ring in my very ears.
The theme of the maintenance of friendship between Hong Kong and Canton has been the subject of repeated reference in this Council, and only in October last Sir Andrew Caldecott said: "Of the need for understanding and co-operation between ourselves and our Chinese neighbours there can be no possible doubt, and I agree with the Senior Chinese Unofficial Member that it cannot be too greatly emphasised or too often reiterated." In times of calamity such as flood and famine the Government has frequently, in the past, shown its great sympathy with this Colony's Chinese neighbours by voting substantial sums for relief. The suffering is indescribable, and the need for medical succour
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