CO129-381 - Governor Sir Lugard - 1911 [11-12] — Page 492

provisional Government. The steamship owners are pressing me to take elaborate measures to safeguard their vessels from convey-

-ing such dangerous explosives. I merely quote this incident in

illustration of the necessity at such time that the Colonial ! Government should not be compelled to maintain a Chinese Telegraphi

Office wholly outside its control by means of which any kind

of instructions can be conveyed to its own officials stationed

in this Colony.

6.

Sir J. Jordan's telegram has left me entirely

at a loss to understand what position the telegraph office here

holds. Apparently though excluded from the provisional arrange-

-ment it is to enjoy all the advantages of that arrangement.

7.

It had occurred to me that since the withdraw.

-al of the concessions at Tientsin and Shanghai which the

Eastern Extension Telegraph Company enjoy (as an equivalent of the Hongkong concession) would injure the Chinese fully as much I imagine as it would injure the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company at such a time as this, and in view of the fact that Wu Ting Fang and the Revolutionary leaders at Shanghai are loud in their professions of good will towards the British, it might be feasible to obtain from them a confirmation of the Shanghai and Tientsin concessions as an act of good-will (independent of the Hongkong telegraphs) and seeing that Hongkong had been ex- -cluded from the provisional arrangement, that they would not be unwilling to see the telegraphs in the Colony in the hands of the friendly Colonial Government instead of the Peking Government and would recognise the justice of the Colony's demand. Both Wu Ting Fang and Wen Tsung-yao (his lieutenant) were educated in

Hongkong.

Beyond suggesting this course (of voluntary

cession)