5
See No.17 on
7230/1/38 Gen.
See Article 8.
See (1).
seek expedients such as the Foreign Office
suggest for allowing the vessels to proceed
to Canton. The difficulty is that we have
told Hong Kong to apply on a de facto basis
the greater part of Hague Convention XIII.
This is clearly incompatible with the
Barcelona Convention, which expressly states
that it does not prescribe the rights and
privileges of belligerent states in time of
war. There is no legal necessity for the
application of the Hague Convention as there
is no legal state of war between China and Japan
and the only basis for its de facto application is the Governor's powers under Hong Kong Law.
In the present case it appears that these are
overriden by the application of the Barcelona
and Convention that the Governor would have
no power to hold up in any way the se
torpedo boats.
It is probable that af these boats
are allowed to be exported from Hong Kong to Canton the Japanese Government will protest
strongly, particularly as I understand that
it is proposed to export another eighteen to
China from this country. Mr. Jarrett informs
me that these will probably be covered by an
Admiralty licence or at least that such a
licence will be applied for, and I understand
from him that in any case the two boats at
present in question possess a Board of Trade
licence for export, though not an Admiralty
licence. It appears, however, that in any
case we could not prevent these boats being
exported