Copy
Enclosure.
(2)
(3)
The intimation of ivir. Acting Consul-General Shimidzu to
Ho Sui Tin of the visit to Hongkong of Mr. Saito, .P. was given
at the latter's request. The Diet was in session at the time
and in order that he should proceed to Canton and complete the
business connected with the contract referred to above in as
short a time as possible Mr. Saito sent a special telegram to
Mr. Acting Consul-General Shimidzu stating the object of his
journey to Canton and requesting that Ho Sui Tin should be
informed. The Acting Consul-General did no more than communicate
this information to Ho in a spirit of good-will.
Mr. Acting Consul-General Shimidzu's letters to Ho Sui Tin
were always written on official paper and no particular effort
was made to treat them as secret documents.
The draft of Mr. Acting Consul-General's letter to Ho is in
Chinese, but there are in the English translation of it which
accompanied the communication from His Majesty's Embassy some
words which do not correctly correspond with the sense of the
original. For instance
(meaning "you") is
#R
事
especially interpreted to mean "principals";
X
特再布達
and the characters
are translated "this is a reminder", It is
•
considered that perhaps suspicion may have been aroused by a
misunderstanding of the original meaning through the translation.
(Trans- x lator's note).
The Japanese Foreign Office say, by telephone, that this is
a conventional, and almost meaningless, phrase which occurs
very often in Chinese letters. It cannot conveniently be
translated into Japanese. They say too that in the English
version the phrase is emphasised by making the words "This
is a reminder" into a separate paragraph, though in the
Chinese original it is not separated.
The characters mean literally "Specially a second time
communicated".
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