CO129-483 - Others & Individuals - 1923 — Page 224

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The

results if the Governor keeps his proposals to himself

and his chief advisers as we must presume he does. Colonial Ofiice has not supported any of the proposals

referred to in the Foreign Office memorandum indeed we

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have usually facilitated their task of rejection by

presuming that they were incompatible with the policy of

His Majesty's Government as already known to us.

There remains the fact that the incompatibility

of these proposals with the declared policy of His Majesty's

Government was also known to Sir R. Stubbe. The

explanation is no doubt that in the wild fluctuation of

events in China he expected changes in the policy of His

Majesty's Government to cope with fluctuations. We have,

however, given him no ground for expecting such change and

it might be well to tell him to put forward no further

proposals in conflict with our general policy unless and

until we inform him of a change of principle. This

should relieve Foreign Office from further annoyance of in this nature, The proposals themselves have not been good

and have veered about in a truly astonishing manner. It

may, however, be mentioned that the most foolish proposal

of all that as to the Railway wes put forward by Sir C.

Severn when Officer Administering the Government

and also

that one of these inadmissible proposals received some

measure of support from our late Minister at Peking.

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his

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In many ways, especially financially, Sir R. Stube

has done well as Governor. As regards knowledge of affairs

in China it must be admitted that he has shown himself

inclined to hasty judgment on insufficient experience of

them