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Your Excellency,
I submit the following report upon the
Shipping Control Scheme operated by the Hongkong Government. The report is supplementary to the reports made in Sir Henry May's and your Confidential Despatches of the 21st. May and 1st. November,
1918.
(ots) M. Hetcher.
15.4.19.
As soon as the armistice with Germany was
signed the situation on the China Coast began to assume a more normal aspect, and it rapidly became apparent, on the one hand that the Government would find increasing difficulty in maintain- -ing its control, and on the other that there was less and lesa justification, on the score of expediency, for its action in so doing. On the 14th. November a largely attended meeting of British Members of the Chamber of Commerce passed a resolution urging the Government to press for the release of all requisitioned ships að soon as possible; and on the 16th. November the Secretary of State was informed by telegram to this effect, it being stated that there was no objection to the immediate release of vessels held under the local scheme, provided that tonnage could be retained for the coil supply. On the 6th. December the Shipowers Protection Association of Hongkong, an Association representing sixtem shipping companiəs which was formed to protect the interests of the omers of locally controlled vessels, pressed strongly for the release of the ships; further telegrams were addressed to the Secretary of State on the 13th. and 31st. December and 23rd. January, it being urged in the last telegram that the local control should be abolished; and in the Secretary of State's telegram of the suma date a discretionary power was given to discontinue the requisition scheme. The Secretary of State was informed by telegram on the 29th, January that it had been decided to release the ships from financial control with effect from the lat. February, and steps were taken
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