53821/42.
OST SECRET
Colonial Office,
139 224
Downing Street, S.W.1.
7 December, 1942.
Dear Ashley Clarke,
We note from your letter to Seel of the 3rd December about the draft Treaty with China that you have not found it possible to make any reference to the position in Kenya in authorising the Ambassador to discuss the question of real property. We appreciate the difficulty of making a specific reservation, as will apparently be intended in the case of India and Burma but we had hoped that the Foreign Office might have been able to hit upon some means of avoiding the embarrassing position which seems likely to arise in Kenya if the Chinese are given a Treaty right to acquire real property, and that we should then have had the opportunity to consider any such suggestions.
I can only repeat that the difficulty is a very real one for us; and the suggestion in the last paragraph of your letter to Seel as to meeting criticisms in Kenya is not really practicable. The explanation you suggest, if given publicly, must be expected to reach Chinese cars and cause awkwardness in that quarter; but what concerns us more is that it would in effect be a re-statement of the White Highlands policy which would expose us to a heavy attack from another set of critics.
3
If there is no better way out of the difficulty, we think that the Ambassador's suggestion in paragraph 2 of his telegram No. 1615 should be supported, viz that
the
H. ASHLEY CLARKE, ESQ.