CO129-495 - Governor Sir Clementi - 1926 [11-12] — Page 454

This Dogument is the Property of His Britannic Majesty & Government, and should be returned to the Foreign Office if not required for official use.?

7/2/110.)

CHINA.

444

Cypher telegram to Sir R. Macleay (Peking).

Foreign Office. 31st December, 1925, 10,0 a.m.

No. 381.

Your telegram No. 543,

While fully realizing the dangers of the present situation and the possibility of still more serious developments, I an satisfied that you have correctly appreciated the causes of Sir Francis Aglen's panic and that we should avoid being stampeded by him into hastily adopting expedients which may postpone but will certainly aggravate the dangers with which we are threatened. It should be quite easy for the government to obtain enough money for current expences from customs revenues and you should therefore dis-

courage all proposals for continuing famine relief surtaxes or advances by berks or temporary foreign control.

The suggestion that a shadowy central government in Peking, incapable of functioning as a government

anywhere else in China, should be bolstered up with

foreign loans for the sole purpose of signing a

treaty with the foreign powers binding the whole of

China is a reductio ad absurdum of the policy of

intervention in China's domestic affairs (mainly in

the interests of foreign lenders) which has grown

up since the revolution of 1911, and of which the

principal feature is control of the Chinese customs

revenues

I