CO129-492 - Governor Sir Clementi - 1925 [12] - 1926 [1-5] — Page 112

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that no payment from Boxer Indemnity Funds should be made to Kuang-tung until the anti-British boycott is ended and that the allocation of those funds should not be used as a means of bargaining with the Canton Government. It would, however, have

a salutary effect if the Delegation were to visit Hongkong at an early date and make allocationa (say) to the Hongkong University, while entirely ignoring Canton.

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17.

In Legislative Council on the 4th February I stated publicly that the Hongkong Govern- ment expects and requires the Canton Government to put an end to the illegal activities of the strike Committee: that we hold the Canton Government to be responsible: but that we remain prepared to negotiate with the Canton Government an honourable and a lasting settlement. A copy of this speech is enclosed in my despatch No. 53 of the 5th February. The Canton Government (as you will see from the press communiqué issued by the Hongkong Government and enclosed in my secret despatch of the 23rd January) has hitherto refused to negotiate and I fear that it has no real desire for conciliation and does not wish to end the boycott except upon terms which would humiliate Great øritain and Hongkong and which would therefore be more permanently harmful to British interests in China than the boycott itself. No doubt the large mass of the Cantonese population would welcome an early settlement; but the masses are inarticulate and

are terrorized by the Strike Committee: and unfortun- ately, although anti-British feeling has subsided

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