M. gent.
I should like to reply
before Xmas. Have
any comments on this
interating
letter.
you
19.14
Page
Page
(C.A.A. 1).
CONFIDENTIAL.
No.
Received
19/12/45
CIVIL AFFAIRS ADMINISTRATION,
Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank Building,
Hong Kong.
5th December, 1945.
Sir George Gater, G.C.M.G., K.C.B., D.S.O.,
Colonial Office,
Downing Street,
LONDON, S.W.1.
Dear Sir George,
Thank you for your letter of October 23rd.
I am afraid that the news about the abandonment of the automatic increments scheme will be a blow to some people here. We will, however, do the best we can.
2.
Before I left London you asked me to let you know from time to time, in a general way, how things were going. I think, on the whole, not too badly. Just lately in China our rehabilitation effort has had a good press, though with the mess in Shanghai and Canton as the main standards of comparison, a comparatively good reputation was perhaps not very difficult in the end to achieve. Still, after the beating we have taken since 1941 from the newspapers of China, it is not unpleasant to see something British receive relatively favourable comment.
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It was odd coming back to Hong Kong a sick and seedy shadow of the colony I knew. It was odder still to accustom oneself to a community where words like "jeep" and "D-day" provoked stares of blank incomprehension, where one recognised old friends mainly by their voices and where Chinese persisted in bowing like Japanese. The town was dead deserted streets, unvexed harbour, shuttered shops: it is beginning to look different now, and we fancy we can almost feel the city coming alive from day to day. I like to think that we have made the most of what little we have, and I would like still more to be able to assure you that our efforts are solely
I responsible for the gratifying transformation. suspect, however, that the truth is a good deal simpler: if you give them half a chance, you cannot keep the Chinese down.
4.
The task has proved both simpler and more difficult than I envisaged during the London planning. Once on the spot, you quickly perceive there are a few things you must handle or perish. Socrates or Will Hay or somebody said one becomes a builder by building and a harpist by harping: similarly I suppose one becomes a rehabilitator by rehabilitating. Currency, labour, public health and food admit of no mistakes. In the first six weeks I bitterly resented anything that destroyed concentration on these and the amiable advisers who descended on us from time to time were not wholly welcome. Nor were the people who quoted directives at awkward moments.
5.
There are tangles in almost every branch of the administration which will not, in my opinion, be straight by 1947 even if we get out teams of professional untanglers from home in due course. The thing is to put such tangles firmly out of one's mind for the time being and get on with
To do this currency, labour, public health and food. needs a kind of administrative toughness which seems to develop as one goes along. I imagine the alternative is
go crazy; and I fancy that a neat administrative mind
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