He readily agreed to adjust the wording to meet points which I raised. I therefore wired at once to the Prime Minister for authority to accept this addition to the Instructions. When I informed the Commanders-in-Chief of the action I had taken I found they fully agreed.
5. The Prime Minister replied favourably to my signal subject only to adding a requirement that the Governor should inform the British Defence Co-ordination Committee in any case in which he exercised his right of appeal. I was thus in a position on the morning of my departure June 9th, to transmit formally to the Governor on behalf of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, the instructions reproduced at AnnexII.
6.
Registration of the Population.
As indicated in the Governor's signal No. 15 already referred to registration of the population was one of the obvious military security steps about which he was apprehensive in relation to the peculiar circumstances of Hong Kong, Once on the spot I was able to appreciate much better the kind of pressures, and conflicting influences, to which the local authorities are subject. That there is much local anxiety about security was evident at the Press Conference which I held, and fron many enquiries made to me by prominent citizens. We had direct evidence of the pull the other way in Nanking telegram 789 of 7th June together with the Shanghai telegrams to which it relates, in which it appeared that the British Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, holding the view that Hong Kong could be rendered untenable by means of a boycott and internal unrest, represented that the sending of re-inforcements to the Colony had been given undesirable publicity of à defiant and provocative nature. This was a good example of pressure from commercial interest:
not in Hong Kong alone but on the China Coast generally, which the Governor of the Colony cannot ignore.
7. I had, however, had the advantage on the journey from Singapore to Hong Kong, of being able to read Sir Henry Gurney's despatch No. 5 of 30th May, setting out the experience gained in operations in Malaya, for the guidance of other Colonial Governments. An cxtract from this despatch on the subject of registration is at Annex III. What Sir Henry Gurney had to say strengthened me in the view that an improvement in internal security in liong Kong would only be obtained by introducing registration at once as a preliminary step to instituting, at whatever date proved to be necessary, a comprehensive control of inmigrantion. Such control could only be introduced when registration had been completed, or at least well advanced. The Governor was prepared to go ahead with registration, but warned me that not more than 250,000 cases could be dealt with in a
month,