No: SECRET.
Copy to:-
Peking No. 6.
3381
N
Canton No. 14.
Sir,
зе
GOVERNMENT HOUSE,
HONG KONG,
19th February, 1937.
42
53770/26
Deart
Copy & Jewell.
142 4
Camy.
вят
I have the honour to address you with reference
to the development of the port of Whampoa, near Canton.
I cannot find that this subject has ever been the subject
of a Hong Kong despatch before, but in paragraph 3 of my secret (2) despatch of the 24th September, 1936, (reporting
my visit to Canton) I mentioned the extension of the
Hankow-Canton Railway to Whampoa, an extension which
implies some development of the latter place as a port.
2. I am informed that during the period of anti-
British feeling which followed the general strike and
boycott of 1925 much was written in the vernacular press
of South China on this subject. The idea then was to
cut out this Colony as the ocean door of South China.
There has of course been a great improvement in Sino-
British feelings since then, but nevertheless the fact
remains that the development of Whampoa was one of the
visions of Dr. Sun Yat-sen and figures in his will.
It
was inevitable that something should be done there, if
only to save the face of the Chinese nation in the matter
of posthumous respect and loyalty to an almost deified
leader. A precis of passages from Dr. Sun Yat-sen's
"Methodical Plans for Building up Our Country" is the
first enclosure to this despatch.
Encl. No. 1.
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
W.G.A. ORMSBY-GORE, P.C., M.P.,
&C.,
&C.,
&C.
3.