54145/16/48
The Church House,
Great Smith Street, London, S.W.1.
23 November, 1948.
Many thanks for your letter of the
8th about Kowloon, giving your views on
general grounds on taking a friendly power to the International Court under the compulsory procedure, or submitting a case to the Court or to an arbitral tribunal by special agreement with the other party.
2.
We note that you are still in any case not in favour of submitting the Kowloon dispute to the International Court or re- ferring it to arbitration, because the
Law Officers' Report indicated that it was not likely that we should succeed in estab- lishing our case.
3.
We have also the Ministry of Defence view expressed in Wheeler's letter of the 4th (of which I understand you have a copy) viz. that it would not be wise to
attempt to resolve the present difficulty by recourse either to the International Court or to abbitration.
4.
We had hoped that, besides indi- cating your views on the points dealt with
P.W. SCARLETT, ESQ.
/in