C.O.
REGISTERED No.
54093/41.
DRAFT AND RECORD COPY
LETTER
SENT
SECRET AND PERSONAL.
Colonial Orfaqe,
3
DATE Downing Street, S.W 1. 23rd September, 1941.
DAFF
MR...Gent
MR......
MR.........
To
3
ENCLOSURES
FURTHER ACTION
54095
2.41.
I expect you will have seen Northcote's confidential letter to me of the 21st April which reached me with his letter of the 22nd April which was the first in a series of personal news letters which he said that he intended to send off more or less monthly in order to keep us posted here as to how things were in Hong Kong. I very much hope that you will be able to continue this series as it helps us enormously to appreciate better the events which form the subject of official telegrams and despatches. I have not yet had the second of the series, but the first I showed to those here who are more particularly concerned with Hong Kong affairs, and informally to the Far East Department at the Foreign Office (impressing upon them Northcote's express wish that nothing in the letters should be regarded as quotable.)
Q
Apart from people and affairs actually in Hong Kong it will always be helpful to us to have a paragraph or two in the news letter on "foreign affairs" as seen from the Hong Kong angle and as affecting Hong Kong. We have, of course, all the Foreign Office telegrams with our Embassies and Posts in the Far East, so that I don't mean to suggest anything in the way of a resumé of them, but simply Hong Kong impressions and reactions.
Incidentally, as regards foreign affairs, I have had a note from the Foreign Office to say that the Chinese Ambassador here told Sir Alexander 41 Cadogan that he had received a personal message from HK Dr. Quo Tai Chi to the effect that the authorities
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in Hong Kong "displayed an unsympathetic attitude towards China" and that in this respect Dr. Quo "felt that they were not acting in the spirit of the policy which was being followed by H.M.G." They were
SIR MARK YOUNG, K.C.M.G.
good
(6094) Wt. 25403-113 40,000 ea. 2 sorts 9/40 T.S. 695