The Under Secretary of State
545
-4- 22/6/1915.
In order to show you how very careful we ourselves have been when we heard about the suspicion cast upon our Agent, we should mention that we telegraphed on the 16th inet. to Messrs.Johnson Stokes & Master to procure for us a document which should, once for all, destroy what we can but consider as quite undeserved aspersions on our agent. We asked them
to obtain for us an affidavit by Mr, Cheetham on the points at
Their answer, dated Hongkong the 18th June, reads:
obtained affidavit Cheetham:
issue.
"Yours sixteenth
•
his connection Reuters completely severed, acting exclusively your behalf, engages absolutely never
lend support any attempt or scheme for Reuters (to) recover business or any interest therein."
Comment on this is superfluous, but we wonder what impression our American friends will have of it all. They must be quite perplexed and alarmed by now at this hesitation and doubt to employ an Englishman appointed by His Excellency the Governor of Hongkong to handle this important business of theirs and ours,
who is then refused, then reappointed and even now apparently only half trusted.
All this gives the Texas Company a right to cancel its contract with us, to drop Hongkong, which is after all not the place of consumption but only of transit, and to appoint an American or even a German in Canton to snap his fingers at British intereats which he finds interfere so much with his
business.
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