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present chaos of moving further for the moment.
www.
I have seen Ting since my return to Peking and he
is in fact leaving for Wei-hai-wei immediately: he was
more than ever ready to stand down. He on his part was
very insistent that Nanking government having shown this
direct interest in the question, it was most desirable
for future Anglo-Chinese relations that we should not
miss this opportunity to secure their genuine co-opera-
tion: even if Nanking government fell we could always
point to this demonstration of our goodwill to China
es a whole. There is possibly something in this. At
the same time I am averse to proceeding too fast for the
present. The main question, namely whether we adhere to
our present policy regarding the use of Indemnity Fund
still remains open and I do not consider that we should
decide one way or the other until the political situation
is less obscure. We might proceed for the present as
proposed in last sentence of last paragraph of your
telegram No. 56 to me in Shanghai and I should be inclined
to ask Hushi to sound Tsai, Wang Chung-hui and either of
the last two as to serving on provisional committee.
Do you agree? Yen, whom I have consulted, approves of
list, but I would omit Wu and Chow Pei-chen.
He thinks that the list may be acceptable to
present Cabinet as Wang and himself are personal friends
of Pan-fu. He is sounding latter and will let me know
the result. Meanwhile it would help to know what
prospect there is of getting amending act through
parliament should we proceed with it.
Addressed to Foreign Office No. 1033. Repeated to Shanghai,
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.