42
Note of conversation with Mr.Bllard, Superintendent of the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company at Shanghai on the 2nd August,
1910.
Mr. Ballard was accompanied by Mr.Swan, Superintendent of the
Eastern Extension Telegraph Company, Hongkong. Mr. Ballard stated
that Imperial Chinese Telegraph Administration wished to abandon
the Telegraph line running from the British frontier at the head
of Deep Bay to Sham Shui Po and to substitute for it a line
running alongside the Railway from Lo Eu to a point in Kowloon
where it would join the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company's
line and be led in to the Eastern Extension Company's offices in
Hongkong where the line would be operated by representatives of
the Imperial Chinese Telegraph Administration. The Imperial
Chinese Telegraph Administration wished in fact to continue the
existing arrangement merely substituting a new line along the
Railway for the old one.
The Chinese, he said, seemed to think that it was quite competent
to them to construct the new line at once and to abandon the old
one.
He recognised that no action should be taken without consulting
this Government. He had mentioned the subject to Sir John Jordan
who had deprecated making the question a diplomatic one. Sir
John had said that it was one for mutual arrangement and had
expressed the opinion that the Hongkong Government zigki ought
to be satisfied if the Imperial Chinese Telegraph Administration
were to arrange with the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company that
new line should be owned by the Chinese Administration but should
be maintained by the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company in order
that the difficulty of the Chinese maintaining and repairing a
line in British Territory might be got over.
I said that if Sir John Jordan had given expression to such view,
he
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