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It will be my earnest endeavour to maintain the friendly relations with those Authorities which have been and will I trust, continue to be of such inestimable benefit to Hongkong.
I have expressed to you, Sir, something of the appreciation and gratitude that I feel for the words in which you have addressed me for your welcome and for your good wishes; believe me this gratitude is very genuine and sincere.
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But deeper far than this; more firmly embedded in the mind and, I may say, in the history of Hongkong, is the debt of gratitude which we all owe to Your Excellency for everything that you have done for Hongkong during the period of your administration.
To you personally, Vice-Admiral Sir Cecil Harcourt, I tender on behalf of this Colony, an expression of profound thanks and of very real admiration for the wise guidance that you have given to the Colony during the period of your administration, and for the positive and, if I may say so, brilliantly successful results that have attended your labours. Your Excellency's administration of this Colony will indeed be remembered with the utmost gratitude.
And to all those who have worked under Your Excellency's command, many of whom will, I am glad to say, continue, some permanently and some for a time, to form part of the Government of Hongkong, I tender my greetings; I thank you sincerely for what you have already achieved; and I welcome the prospect of your co-operation in the future.
A
I spoke just now of the hope that I entertained throughout the period of my absence from Hongkong the hope that I would return to resume my office. And now that this hope has been fulfilled, it is, you may be sure, Ladies and Gentlemen, a source of the most lively and real satisfaction to me to receive the greetings of the residents of the Colony and the warm welcome which has just been extended to me by my honourable and revered friend Sir Robert Ho Tung.
I thank you most cordially, Sir Robert, and I thank all those on whose behalf you speak for your kindly references to the past, for your good wishes for the future and, above all, for your promises of co-operation and support. I recall that on my first arrival in Hongkong I called upon the inhabitants of the Colony to do their utmost to help and co-operate with the Government in those critical times. The call was answered, and it is with pride as well as with thanks that I look back on the support that I had from the people of Hongkong in 1941. thank God, the problems and difficulties before us are very different ones, but the need for unity and for co-operation exists as strongly as it ever did and I rely today as I did in the past on the active goodwill of every loyal inhabitant of Hongkong.
Now,
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Reference was made in Your Excellency's speech to the plans for the development of self-goverment in Hongkong which have been receiving the attention of His Majesty's Government. am happy to say that I have been authorised to make the following announcement on this subject :
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