.(C.A.Á. 1).
No.
54177/45
PERSONAL & CONFIDENTIAL.
R.
9/1
P-15
16
y
CIVIL AFFAIRS ADMINISTRATION,
Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank Building,
Hong Kong.
19th October, 1945.
G. E. J. Gent, Esq., C.M.G., D.S.0., 0.B.E., M.C., LONDON.
子
Ask Fo.
TO. hav pramien^
Sewer J...
проси моя май
./.
1/
Dear
Gent
The trouble about coping 15 hours a day with succeeding problems (each of which appears more immediate and ticklish than the last), is that no time is left for the business of reporting. I hope that I have kept you sufficiently informed by telegram, and I have sent weekly "appreciation" signals painting the broader picture.
2.
Wallinger's report of his Hong Kong visit enclosed with the Ambassador's despatch to F.0. of 5th October may have caused you to wonder about several points not touched on in the telegrams. As in most reports (and books) written by week-end visitors, there are inaccuracies.
3.
I trust, for example, you will not think that I waited for any suggestion from Wallinger before laying on
In actual fact, arrangements to get firewood from Borneo. about the first thing I did here after I had sized up the situation was to persuade the Admiral to agree to special arrangements by which Bass went to Borneo for firewood, Holmes to Shanghai for coal, and a Frenchman to Hongay for coal, peanut oil and anything else he could lay his hands The success of these jaunts is not yet known.
on.
4.
You may have been surprised too to read that "all executive decisions" were taken by a committee presided by the Admiral's Chief of Staff. This is very wide of the mark. The committee referred to forms a sort of clearing house for service matters, etc., and for some weeks now it has been
Major matters are attended not by me but by my deputy. seldom raised. Up to the present as regards executive decisions, I have been exercising a form of personal government through the Admiral, who takes the possibly optimistic view that I was sent out because I knew the job and the Colony, and he shows every disposition to accept my advice on all save service matters. Last week he formed a Military Council of the G.0.C., A.0.C., the Commodore and myself, which meets
so I may have a better weekly under his own chairmanship chance of spreading the responsibility a little more in future.
5.
-
The reference in Wallinger's report to the S.C.A. developed from a flanking attack made on the dignity and scope of that office by John Keswick in which Wallinger
This does himself later, with proper discretion, joined. not seem to me to be the time to consider amendments in the functions of the S.C.A., and it is aggravating to be compelled to take time off from the all engrossing task of getting rice, peanut oil and coal into the Colony by
A fair means or foul, to parry thrusts of this sort. copy of my improvised stalling operation is enclosed as a matter of interest.
6.
In view of my own case-history I would forgive
So many you if you smiled at my present predicament. people come so many hundreds of miles on triple A priority to tell me that a new China has been born, and that Hong
Everyone seems Kong is, as it were, no longer an island. now to say and to think what would have been usefully said
But this is late and thought any time from 1937 to 1941.
Then China needed 1945 and the situation has changed.