Mr. Lloyd
1
New Territories, Hong Kong,
Although it may possibly no longer be my affair I have felt for some time some apprehension as to the proper briefing of our representative on the Far Eastern Commission at Washington where the question of the above territories, held under the 1898 Lease, will presumably come up for early discussion.
2. The preamble to the Lease gives defence as the only object of that Lease and it will doubtless be maintained that such an argument is no longer valid in view of what happened in December 1941 and in view of the general conditions of modern warfare.
3. It is also probable that the words of Clause 3 of the Atlantic Charter, "the restitution of sovereign rights and self-government to those who have been forcibly deprived of these ", will be quoted. However inapplicable in the case of the almost barren island of Hong Kong itself, these words do in some degree apply to the New Territories whatever the then Government of China may have signed away in 1898, There was some active opposition to the cession at first, leading, among other things, to the removal of the iron gates of the walled city of Kam Tin. (The gates were restored by Sir R.E. Stubbs with great ceremony in the early nineteen- twenties). Moreover, Kowloon walled city, at first left as an enclave of China, with leading rights in the bay and a right of way by the old Sai Kung road, was, a few years after the signing of the lease, included in the leased territories by unilateral and slightly forcible means.
4. Nor would it be possible to have anything like an honest plebiscite among the present inhabitants as to their future political status. They all know that their life is happier under the existing benevolent government than it would probably be under a Chinese administration but it is hardly to be expected that they will dare to say so. The retrocession of Wei-hai-wei in the teeth of local opposition is probably a fair analogy.
5. A statement "ex cathedra" last year to the effect that the Shing Mun reservoir is the only New Territories concern that really matters to the Colony, and that the condensation of sea-water would be a practicable substitute is rather disquieting.
6.
I am not sure if the following points are common knowledge:-
(a)