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Attorney General.
They expressed anxiety lest the injunctions
obtained by plaintiff's in cases 1, 2 and 3 would not be obeyed
and the assets would be interfered with and dispersed. They
inted out that the 15 employees named as defendants were not
actually any of them the individuals on the airfield who had custody
of the'planes and that they did not know the names of the individuals
who had this custody. They contended that the Hongkong police
had the duty to take such steps as were nece.sary to ́see that the
injunctions were not disobeyed and that the only way to ensure
this was for the police to take the nomes of these individuals and
to supply these names to the plaintiffs in order that the plaintiffs
might on the basis of this information make further applications
to the court alleging that the individuals in actual physical custody
of the 'planes were servants and agents of the defendants against whom
injunctions had been obtained and were in contempt as having already
to some extent disobeyed the injunctions and were likely to disobey
them still more seriously in the future. The Attorney General,
after an interval for reflection, made the following offer, which
the plaintiffs' solicitors accepted. Since it appeared to be probable
that if the plaintiffs went to the airfields to inform the individuals
whom they found in custody of the 'planes of the injunctions they
had obtained and mentioned warnings against disobedience to them
and taking the names of the individuals whom they found there, the
plaimiffa might be met by violence and a breach of the peace might
ensue and since the Hongkong Government did not want such a breach
of the peace, the Attorney General offer d that at a given time
(possibly the same afternoon, possibly the next day) a sufficient
body of police under proper supervision would be present at the
airfield and the plaintiffs could under this protection go to the
airfield, give the warnings and take the names as they wanted to do
80. In fact the police went to the airfield as arranged. Plaintiffs
did not turn up and the plaintiffs' solicitors then explained by
telephone that these Chinese individuals on the Nationalist side had
got cold feet because of what might happen to them later on in
Communist China if they took too active a personal part in this
matter. On this occasion plaintiffs clearly s owed their appreciation
/of the