CO129-457 - Public Offices - 1919 — Page 663

No.78. Secret.

(& 3 copies).

Copy to H. M. Consul-General at Shanghai.

Acting Consul-General at Canton to H.M. Minister.

CANTON,

632

sir,

1st October, 1919.

With reference to the Straits Settlements Secret

Abstract of Intelligence, Series of August 1919, Note No.

256 (page 34), I have the honour to report that the

Secretary to the Coadssioner of Police at Canton informs

ine that the police have at present no knowledge at the

existence here of any of the societies specified. No.30,

Nam Chiu Street (

) is a lodging-house occupied

by certain students engaged in learning wireless

telegraphy at the Canton Wireless Telegraph Station. It

is immediately opposite the Police Headquarters, and is

being kept under observation.

The enclosed extract from yesterday's issue of the

*72 Hong Merchants "Newspaper",one of the leading

Chinese newspapers at this port, shews that use is being

made by certain Chinese of the Japanese boycott movement

to formulate demands for improved conditions of labour,

and to organise a "labour party" ( ) to enforce these

demands by joint action. Whether this development is

merely the spontaneous awakening among the working

classes of a sense of their hardships, or something alien

to the Chinese temperament implanted, for ulterior

motives, by persons educated abroad, is perhaps open to question; but it seems to lend colour to the statement

in Note No. 256, under the heading of "The New Society of

Cant on that there is some organisation which is

The Right Honourable

Sir J. Jordan, G. C. I. E.,K.C.B.,K.C.M.G.,

etc.,

etc.

etc.

PEKING.

prepared/