13
28
However just and
Furtoar comments, and a brief analysis of causes and factors which
hare led to Britisi incirility in the Cuinerg.
benevolent a Government may be, if it is served by men of overbear-
ing and uncivil manners, that Goverment will lose the respect and
loyalty of its subjects, who will ultimately seek to rise against
it. If this be true of any Coverment in relation to ita own
subjects, how much more ac in the case of Hong Kong, where the
Chinese are not 'subject peoples' and differ in race, culture,
manners, language and outlock from the British.
In
Nevertheless, before the Japanese occupation, the attitude
of a large proportion of British people in Hong Kong and the Treaty
Ports was much that of a conquering people towards a subject race.
In all probability this attitude is traceable back to that of the
British firstcomers to the Colony after it was ceded to Britain.
face of the well-nigh implacable hostility of the Chinese, the atti-
tude of the British firstcomers is understandable, but with the
development of the Colony and the increased intercourse with the
Chinese, it is deplorable that this attitude towards them should
have persisted and, throughout a whole century, successivo newcomers
from Britain should have emulated the exazıple of 'old handɛ' in
their treatment of the natives'. My father, who was born and
spent the greater part of his seventy-two years in Hong Kong Many
of which were spent in close touch with the administration of the
Colony, and nine years of which he served as a member of the Legis-
lative Council, was of this opinion.) The attitude of the 'old
China hand' in despising the Chinese is further supported by a