Enclosure 4 in No. 1.
Sir M. Lampson to Rear-Admiral Tyrwhitt.
My dear Admiral,
Shanghai, June 1, 1927. I AM greatly obliged for your letter of the 30th May. Far from there being any question of "treading on my toes," I can assure you that I welcome the opportunity you give me of getting this matter on to a definite basis.
I had not previously seen your circular of the 18th May, copies of which I note have already been sent to all consuls. I therefore propose to send circular instruc- tions to them all, referring to that circular and telling them, in the event of any incident, to get into immediate and direct touch with the nearest naval officer and, if possible, to put up with him agreed recommendations. These recommendations to he telegraphed simultaneously to you and to me by the senior naval officer and the consul respectively. On receipt of the consul's report I would then telegraph to you any comment I had to make, repeating by telegram to the consul in question.
In cases where immediate action, without reference to you or to me, is taken under paragraph 2 and section 5 of your circular, it would be most helpful if commanding officers of His Majesty's ships could be given standing instructions to repeat where possible, to the consular officer of the district concerned, their telegrams to you reporting their action. If you agree to this, I would instruct consuls to pass on such messages at once to me.
If the above general procedure commends itself to you, would you be prepared to agree that where time permits you will give me an opportunity of concurring in any retaliatory action upon which you, on receipt of a consular officer's report, decide before it is actually taken? The one thing I want to avoid is in any way hampering your liberty of action. I only raise the above point because retaliatory action taken in one area may have a very distinct political reaction elsewhere with which we should have to deal.
I enclose a draft of the circular which, if you concur, I should propose to issue to consuls.
Yours sincerely,
MILES LAMPSON.
Enclosure 5 in No. 1.
Sir M. Lampson to Rear-Admiral Tyrwhitt.
My dear Admiral,
On H.M.S. “Keppel," June 4, 1927. AS I arranged with you verbally last night, I am instructing the Legation to-day to send round to consuls by telegram the circular of which a draft was enclosed in my letter of the 1st June regarding the procedure to be followed in case of incidents requiring retaliatory action. I enclose a copy of the circular for confirmation.
The Lungshan" incident is fortunately now only of historic interest, but there is one point that I should like to place on record in connection with it, as you refer to it in your letter of the 24th May, which never reached me in original, but of which a copy was enclosed in your letter of the 30th May. I purposely did not refer to it in my letter of the 1st June because the point then was to get on with the establish- ment of some agreed procedure for future cases.
What I now want to make absolutely clear is that throughout the "Lungshan" correspondence I realised fully that it was for you and not me to decide whether retaliatory action should be taken and, if so, what it should be.
The sequence of events was as follows: In his telegrams Nos. 47 and 48 to me, Brenan reported the "Lungshan incident, stated the demands which he recommended, and suggested a time limit after which, failing compliance, retaliatory action should be taken. He did not suggest any specific form of action. His only concrete suggestion was that in preparation for action that might be necessary a cruiser should be stationed at Whampoa. This was all that was covered by the approval which I expressed in my two telegrams of the 17th May, which were addressed to you and not to Brenan, because I thought you might wish to know my view before coming to any decision. It is true that I repeated my telegrams to Brenan, but that was merely to keep him informed in accordance with my routine
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