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impossible, without international agreement, for there is no lack of foreign shipping ready at short notice to take over the trade now done by British river and coastal steamers. During the boycott of Hong Kong the river was filled with Norwegian craft. But even in that case I by no means agree with the conclusion arrived at by the Advisory Committee that we are helpless in the face of Chinese aggression. The measures to be taken and the advisability of putting them into effect would vary with the general political situation existing at the time. If for instance it were desired to coerce Canton at the present moment, I would recommend, not a blockade interfering with foreign shipping, but the occupation of the Bogue and Whampoa forts, the stoppage of all native traffic on the main inland waterways and in Canton Harbour, and the prevention of any troop movements by water. Further aggressive measures could be the destruction of the arsenal and such military objectives as the Whampoa Military Academy and the aviation sheds on Kuper Island. The province is always either at war, or on the verge of war with its neighbours, and the threat of interference with its military preparations would have a great deterrent effect. All this could be done, with little or no loss of life, by the forces now available in Hong Kong and with no ostensible interference with foreign interests. It would require a garrison on Shameen, which we now have, and the withdrawal of all British subjects from the interior, which was effected the other day and could be done again. This paragraph has been written in consultation with Commander J. U. Fitzgerald, the senior naval officer on the West River and he concurs in the suggestions therein contained. Commander Fitzgerald has now been in command of the West River Patrol for two years and is well qualified to express an opinion on the subject.
11. Such action would admittedly be a very serious measure to take, but so would the blockade contemplated in the report. It could only be justified in an extreme case. The cause would have to be a righteous one and patently so, not only to foreign public opinion but to the Chinese also, who, however, know well enough when they are in the wrong. The measures advocated would, of course, cause a temporary cessation of British trade, and could therefore only be undertaken when that trade was already so injured as to make the risks involved worth running. If the Chinese tried to bring about another boycott supported by armed pickets and all the outrages committed on British interests in 1925, I personally am of the opinion that we should be justified in taking the measures mentioned above and that they would prove speedily effective. The danger would not be a prolonged resistance in Canton itself. but the repercussion in other parts of China where possibly conditions were again satisfactory from the point of view of the British trader, who would not want to have them disturbed.
12. There will. of course, always be that difficulty, and its extent can only be judged at the time and by the people on the spot. Nevertheless. I think that punitive action in a just cause could be taken with much greater safety now than it could in 1925, and I do not agree with those who maintain that a little force used by the British at the beginning of the boycott in that year would have saved China and her foreign residents all the trouble they have since been through. The Chinese had not then experienced the horrors of Communism, and in order that they should reject the doctrine of their own volition, it was necessary that they should feel its effects at first hand on their persons and property and trade. The experience has been a costly one for the foreigners involved and ten times more so for the Chinese, but in the long run the lesson will be invaluable from the point of view of all who desire peaceful trading conditions. Whereas, a short while ago, any Chinese who dared oppose the anti-foreign programme of the extremists was silenced with the cry of traitor and imperialist, now, in Canton at all event, the term " Communist" is even more opprobrious, and the Chinese merchant who wishes to trade with the British can once more lift his head and with safety denounce his assailants as Communists and counter-revolutionaries. The latter epithet is apparently applicable to anyone of either side whose views disagree with one's own.
13. In 1925. moreover. China was genuinely aroused over the killing of the students in Shanghai and Canton, whilst the Young Nationalist movement in the latter city was being watched with interest as the promise of a brighter day and better things for China, distracted as she was by the interminable civil wars of the self-seeking Northern militarists. An attack on it at that time would have met with no sympathy from Chinese anywhere, or from the other Powers, and it would probably have rearoused all the anti-British ferment on the Yang-tsze and at Shanghai, which was then subsiding. Whatever immediate result it may have had
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at Canton itself, we may be sure that it would have been regarded elsewhere as a brutal attempt to kill a genuine and laudable Nationalist revival for selfish capitalistic reasons, and it would have played directly into the hands of the Soviet and strengthened their influence throughout the country. If the Russians were to be defeated in China they had to be given the rope to hang themselves, and this they would seem to have done.
14. Our policy of conciliation has been galling to British subjects in South China, and to no one more than myself, who have had to put up personally with the consequent Chinese truculence and rudeness for a longer period than any other official except my colleague at Swatow. But it has at least proved to the world that we are not selfishly opposed to a Chinese national revival. The excesses committed by our late antagonists have alarmed and disgusted both the Chinese and the other foreign Powers, and if we were again wantonly attacked, we could, I think, retaliate with the feeling that at least we had with us the sympathy of all decent foreigners
I have, &c.
and many Chinese.
0
J. F. BRENAN.
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