135
·
a
typified in the case of the emergency water equipment required the moment we land in Hong Kong, On civilian basis this equipment takes 12 months to procure from the date of order.
The Army are understood to have a stock pile or the requisite stores and, from long experience, a cut and dried technique in organizing efficient emergency water arrangements. In these circumstances does the Unit try to place its civilian orders immediately and hope that procurement 12 months from now will be in time; or does it delay the order in the hope that eventual militarization will shift the responsibility to the ready-made military machine and the adequate sup lies of the War Office? If in desperation the civilian order is placed now for delivery 12 months hence and later militarization gives the Unit access to War Office supplies, do we take out two sets of emergency water installations?
So with dock equipment, bridging material, telephones, etc. Delay in making the Unit part of the War Office
places our experts in an increasingly hopeless position. In an important range of essential supplies, they have to choose between the risk of having double quantity or none.
7. As to personnel,until militarization takes place and we have an approved war establish- ment, there is no means of knowing with certainty how any given post will be graded or indeed how many posts there will be. So we write wearily round the world sounding potential candidates but unable to tell them whether they will serve as Captains or Colonels. Since we have no military existence, we cannot look at anyone in uniform, (except in rare cases). Everyone speaks highly of the Civil Affairs course at Wimbledon; civilian candidates (other than the few for whom there are Stage II planning jobs in London) are virtually shut out from the benefits of this course; for we cannot ask a man to give up his present job to undergo two months training in Wimbledon and then expect him to go back to unemployment until the Unit is fully mobilized and ready to move overseas.
8. The work of preparing efficiently for the prevention of disease and unrest in Hong Kong is thus again hampered by the fact that we have no military existence. The best candidates tend to slip through our fingers and the longer militarization is delayed the more first-choice candidates will we lopse. that the chief sufferer is who liberates Hong Kong. unhappy citizens of the Colony.
It appears to me likely to be the G.0.0. Chief that is, after the
}
}
9. Colonel Taylor informs me that there is a responsible and informed body of opinion in the Pacific which accepts the possibility that the Japanese may decide to seek peace in the next few months. The War Office hold to the principle that no militarization of a planning unit may take place until the locality for which it plans has an operational date. Although
by