CO129-502-7 China- general situation 4-3-1927 - 26-4-1927 — Page 60

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either as Chief of the Naval Staff or as Senior Officer

of the Committee of Chiefs of Staff, it might be his duty

to warn the Cabinet of the need of an urgent decision. In

any event Lord Beatty felt that if isolated action

on our part were contemplated, a different form of sanctione

was required. They ought to be applied somewhere out of

the line of the Northern advance, possibly, for example,

at Canton. He thought that the circumstances were so

changed that the whole question of sanctions ought to be

entirely reconsidered.

The suggestion was made that, in re-examining the

question of sanctions, the Chiefs of Staff Committee

should consider the possibility and advisability, from a

military point of view, of the re-occupation of the

British Concession at Hankow.

A suggestion was also made that, in view of the

uncertainty of the situation, it would be desirable to

render the Shanghai Defence Force more mobile than at

present and that all possible eventualities in China

should be studied by the Committee of Chiefs of St aff.

The Cabinet agreed

>

(a) In regard to Peking and Tientsin: That the

Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs should send

telegrams to Washington and Tokyo on the lines of the

draft telegrams attached as Enclosure 3 to Appendix

(A)

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