CONFIDENTIAL.
Accountant-General,
His Excellency wishes to have your comments on
this paragraph of the Commission's report in so far as it
concerns the Treasury.
The relevant parts of the evidence
335
Enclosure 6.
are flagged I, II, III & IV.
(Signed) R.R. TODD. Financial Secretary 29. 4. 41.
Honourable Financial Secretary,
The conclusions of the Commissioners as recorded
in this paragraph appear to me to be based mainly on Mr.
Forrest's allegations on page 28 of the second day's evidence,
when he publicly made various accusations against the Treasury,
and against me personally, to which I have not had an oppor-
tunity of replying, either publicly or otherwise. I was pre-
pared to do so, both in justice to the Treasury staff and in
view of the comments which I knew were passing amongst
accountants in Hong Kong, especially my fellow members of the
Institute of Chartered Accountants, but I was given to under-
stand by the Secretary to the Commissioners that they did not
wish for any further statement from me.
2.
-
I do not doubt that Mr. Forrest made these allega-
tions in good faith, believing them to be true, but at the
period to which he refers he had so "lost his head" that I feel
sure that he can have but little coherent recollection of
what actually took place. He frequently consulted me regard-
ing his problems but almost equally frequently he was so
incoherent that I had the greatest of difficulty in understand-
ing him, whilst on several occasions I remember his leaving
my office without having made any point whatsoever and without
my having been able to discover why he had called upon me.
When to this are added an almost daily, and sometimes hourly,
amendment of his administration of his department, and a
definite and repeated refusal to call upon his collectors of