CO129-468 - Governor Sir Stubbs - 1921 [6-8] — Page 542

Senior District Officer,

Junior District Officer,

£750

.

£850

£600

·

£650.

537

The third District Officer, whom I suggest, might perhaps be paid a lower salary e.g. 2500 to £600.

Up to the present the District Officers' posts have usually been filled by borrowing officers from other services, (At the present moment the Senior District Officer, acting as Commissioner, is lent by the China Consular Service; the Junior District Officer, acting as Senior, was on the staff of a local mission, and the acting Junior District Officer is a Student Interpreter borrowed from the British Legation at Peking.) but it is impossible for such an arrangement to be continued indefinitely. The Consular service has lent some good men in the past few years but it is too much to expect that it will always be possible to borrow men from a service which is usually short-handed or that there will always be suitable men to be found. The training of the Consular service is not of the kind required for a District Officer so that the number of Consular Officers suitable for acting appointments in Weihaiwei must necessarily be limited. Hongkong, with every wish to assist, can only do so rarely as the number of officers who speak Mandarin is very small and the usefulness of a District Officer who can speak only a Southern dialect is materially diminished.

It might be possible always to obtain a suitable officer to act temporarily as Senior District Officer, either from the Consular service or from Hongkong but it is most improbable that the junior posts can be so filled regularly. Even if men could be found, they would not be content to accept a maximum salary of £650 for more than a very short time and the result must be a lack of any continuity of experience.

I have recently tried to find an officer of the Cadet Service of Hongkong to act as Junior District

Officer