New Territories.
Various Ordinances, Sanitary and other,
extend the scope of the Urban Council to this area in
disregard of the New Territories Regulation Ordinance.
New Kowloon is defined in the Interpretation Ordinance
as being an area merely subject to the initialling of a
certain map by the Governor. On the other hand the
northern boundary is physically a clear one, namely the
topmost ridge of the Kowloon massif. At its two seaward
ends the delimitation has been elastic in the past, e.g.
ich an extension, by a stroke of the pen, in the Laikok
area was made fairly recently.
5. One important point, possibly "justiciable" if it
came to arbitration, is that, however difficult it may be
to square the retention of the rest of the New Territories
with Article 3 of The Atlantic Charter, the area of New
Kowloon was as barren in 1841 as was the Island of Hong Kong
and that the Article in question is equally inapplicable to
both.
6. While on the subject of the "justiciable" it should
perhaps be mentioned at once that the preamble to the 1898
Lease makes it clear that the sole justification for the
Lease in question was the defence of the Colony proper.
After 1941 and Hiroshima it is not difficult to see how
this point could be argued before a neutral tribunal.
2