Secretariat File No. 8/2161/47.
No. 15
CONFIDENTIAL.
(4) on '49.
(30) on 54126/6/48.
Dr.
GOVERNMENT HOUSE
HONG KONG
sir,
26 January 1950.
55387/50
I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your despatch No. 288 of the 26th November, 1949, regarding remittances made through the International Red Cross for the relief of civilian internees and other British subjects in Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation.
2.
I am naturally unable to offer any comment on the figures in paragraph 2 of your despatch, as no explanation of the division has been furnished.
3.
I regret that I must express my disagreement with the proposition you have enunciated, that any recoveries made from the Red Cross should properly be credited to United Kingdom funds. I would refer to your telegram f No. 480 of the 23rd April, 1948, and to the
statement regarding the financial settlement between this Government and His Majesty's Government which was released simultaneously in London and Hong Kong on the 26th April 1948. Part of that statement read as follows:
4.
"His Majesty's Government will treat
as free grants the advances made prior to and after the establishment of civil government in Hong Kong, amounting to £3,250,000 in all, except in so far as that sum has been used for the purchase of stores for re-sale which has
resulted in cash receipts by the Hong Kong Government."
In my view this statement is clear and
unambiguous.
5.
It appears from your despatch that a proportion of the total amount remitted through the Red Cross came from pre-war Hong Kong funds in London, and that the balance was advanced by His Majesty's Government. Unless His Majesty's Government proposes to break faith with this Government, which of course is unthinkable,- in the matter of the financial settlement as set forth in the paragraph I have quoted, it seems to me perfectly clear that any recoveries made from funds handed over to the Red Cross must in accordance with that settlement accrue to Hong Kong.
-
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
A. CREECH JONES.M.P.
231