CO537-3707 — Page 32

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Nanking reporting that the Chinese Government is declining to come to any arrangement about the Canton outrage incident independently of the Kowloon City incident.

Since dictating this minute it has also been reported to me that the Foreign Office (Mr. Scarlett) has asked that the Governor of Hong Kong should now be informed of the substance of the Law Officers opinion, and that he should be asked whetl in the light of that opinion, he wishes to modify the views expressed in his telegram at No. 271. I should see no objection to a telegram being sent to Hong Kong on those lines, provided it were added that, in the light of the Law Officers opinion, H.M.G. have come to the conclusion that not only are they themselves now stopped from taking the case to the International Court, but that they must also avoid getting themselves into a position where the Chinese might take the case to the Court; and add that, in these circumstances, it is highly desirable that some compromise solution should be arrived at.

I find that I have omitted to record that, on my pointing out to Mr. Rees-Williams that one of the virtues of the solution proposed was that the whole area would be enclosed so as to deny its access to the public, he suggested that we should explore some other solution which would achieve this purpose (e.g. by building a museum on the site or possibly handing it over to the Hong Kong University for buildings to house one of their faculty).

Whilst some such solution might be acceptable from the Hong Kong point of view, I cannot, myself, believe that it would go anyway towards satisfying the Chinese.

ججج

29.7.1948.

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