3
Attorney General's Chambers, Courts of Justice,
58
Hong Kong.
RE
28th May, 1938.
11 JUN 1938
C. O. REGI
Dear Roberts-Wray,
I am sorry not to have answered your letter
to Alabaster before. It arrived after his departure, I sent
it home and Gent sent it back to me at a time when I was en-
gaged in revising the new Women and Girls Bill and in wrestling
with a Rents Control problem which the influx of refugees to
the Colony has now made acute.
The position actually is that the revision
is well commenced. I have been over all the proofs and we
have printed off the first volume. The issue of that volume
is delayed by certain amendments to the shipping regulations in
the companion volume of Regulations which is now being printed,
and I hope to get both these volumes approved within the next
month.
We were of course aware of the grouping
arrangement in force in many other Colonies and before it was
decided to adhere to the chronological order the matter was
discussed by Alabaster, MacGregor and myself. The reasons
which influenced us in adhering to it are: firstly, the urgent
need of revision in this Colony and the delay which a new ar-
rangement would entail; secondly, the difficulty of making a satisfactory rearrangement when so much amendment - twelve or fifteen
years' - has been made in the last edition; thirdly, the fact
that it is always the practice in Hong Kong to publish a com-
prehensive index and it is intended to continue this practice
and such an index is being prepared as we go along.
If we are to adopt the grouping system it
is considered that it will be much easier to do this in the