CO129-504-16 Junior Cadet Officers of Hong Kong Civil Service- petition for revision of salaries 18-12-1926 - 6-7-1927 — Page 8

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children cannot be kept in the Far East after a certain

age without danger to their bodily and mental health. I

do not overlook the fact that the new rent-allowance rules

18445/4800 18449 see my Confidential despatch of 25th August, 1926) apply

to bachelors, but that application is merely an inevitable and equitable extension of a rule primarily designed for

the assistance of the separated husband.

6.

The main argument of the petitioners seems

to be that a Cadet should receive a salary sufficient for

his support as a married man as soon as he becomes a passed

Cadet. It may be admitted without argument that a married

officer with the status of a Cadet cannot, even if he has

no family, and with all the privileges in the matter of

exchange and rent, live here on less than £550 per annum.

But I do not consider that a cadet has any right to expect

that the Colony shall enable him to support a wife before

he has been six years in its service, and I find that the

Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation is even more

drastic in its rules, in that it refuses to allow members

of its European staff to marry before they have completed ten years foreign service, which in practice means that the marrying age is not under 31. It is unlikely that any of

these officers, had he adopted one of the learned professions

instead of joining the Civil Service would have been earning

an income which would have supported him as a married man

under six years.

7.

Even if on general grounds such as the

increase in the cost of living or the necessity for making

the service more attractive to candidates, I had been disposed to support some financial concessions, I could not at the present juncture have done so, because similar

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applications