CO129-495 - Governor Sir Clementi - 1926 [11-12] — Page 563

8.

551

10.

I fully recognise the zeal and ability with which you have grappled with a situation of extraordinary difficulty and have endeavoured to carry out the instructions originally issued you. But those instructions appear to us no longer applicable to the present conditions. The great wave of nationalism which forced the grant of tariff autonomy within three weeks of the opening of the Conference, the increasingly dangerous position at Canton and the developments taking shape in Manchuria and on the Yangtze are new factors which seems to me to have altered the entire situation. These factors have forced us to reconsider our own policy and to endeavour to evolve a new line better suited to meet the new conditions. I realise that the proposals which we have submitted to you are not free from dangers and open to criticisms because any policy can only be a choice of evils, but yours appears to us to be fraught with far greater dangers, and I remain in considerable doubt as to whether you have, in framing them, sufficiently taken all the factors of the new situation with all their implications into full account.

11.

I would therefore ask you to re-

examine once again the whole position in the

light