CFIDENTIAL.
and 2.
1
14
Colonial Office,
Downing Street, S.V.1. 8th November, 1940.
3 and 4 on 34019/34 Eastern
Dear Sterndale Bennett,
In view of the importance of ensuring in the present state of tension in the Far East that there is the closest possible liaison and understanding between the Government of Hong Kong and His Majesty's Ministers in China and Japan, it seems worth reconsidering the proposal which was mooted in 1934 - 1935 (in respect of China only at that time) for a personal representative of each Ambassador to be attached to the Governor's staff in the Colony. The references are to Sir John Maffey's letter to Sir Robert Vansittart of the 7th May 1934 and the latter's reply of the 5th June. For convenience of reference and economy of paper and typing I enclose, for return if you will be so good, our file copies of those two letters.
In the past the proposal has centred round His Majesty's Government's policy in China, but, particularly now that Japanese authority has been projected into the area of China with which Họng Kọng is most concerned, there is a new need for His Majesty's Ambassador in Japan to be included in the proposal. It would not seem to be necessary that such officers need to be very senior, but they should of course have had sufficient experience to enable them to grasp at sight the importance of any particular situation or problem in Hong Kong from the point of view of British relations with China and Japan.
Hong Kong is an obvious focus both for the Japanese to pick a quarrel with us and for the Chung King Government to find means of embroiling us with Japan, and we want to take any possible step which will remove any possibility of conflicting action or policy on the part of the Colonial Government. Things which seem of little or purely local importance in Hong Kong may obviously have a significance which the Governor might quickly appreciate if he had at his elbow officers with a trained capacity to appreciate external effects in such matters.
J.C. STERNDALE BENNETT, ESQ., C.M.G., M.C.
I