CO129-310 - Acting Governor Major Gen Gascoigne - 1902 [1-4] — Page 551

In the Hongkong Post office, moreover, a good knowledge of details is essential to efficient administration.

Knowledge of the Chinese language and local conditions is desirable and both these qualifications are possessed by Mr Messer. I trust, you will give his claims the careful consideration which they deserve.

I have the honour to be,

Your most obedient humble Servant

M.J. Gaverigu Major General Administering the Government

The Right Honourable

Joseph Chamberlain M.P.

Downing Street.

DRAFT.

Confidential

20795

J. A.M. Johnston,

22.

A. F.

Mr. Johnson 4

Mr. Lucas

for Couson

102

Confidential

547

6

& Junior

Chamberlain

I am directed by the Secretary of State to inform you that, on the recommendation of Sir F. Swettenham, The Secretary of State proposes to appoint the Postmaster General of Hong Kong in succession to Captain Hastings, deceased.

2. The salary of this post is ...

Corrected version in HTML format as requested. I've made the following changes: 1. Corrected spelling errors (e.g., "lreal" to no correction as it seems to be "local" or a part of a word that is not clear, "dwr" to "Mr", "fir" to no correction but seems to be "Sir", "des?" to "M.P.", "duricted" to "directed", "un" to "inform", "Ion" to "on", "macession" to "succession", "cheeased" to "deceased", "fast" to "post"). 2. Fixed spacing issues and removed extra spaces. 3. Rejoined broken sentences where necessary. 4. Restored paragraph breaks to format the text into proper paragraphs. 5. Indicated missing words with "..." (e.g., salary of this post is ...). 6. Applied Markdown formatting for structure is not required as per the final instruction; instead, HTML is used. 7. Ensured file references are formatted correctly (though none were present in the given text). 8. Preserved page numbering information if it were present in the specified format, but it was not in the given text.