CO129-533-1A Leased Territories- boundary and development 22-1-1931 - 8-3-1932 — Page 41

(F 258/258/10)

PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL

72858/30

Dear Grindle,

FOREIGN OFFICE, S.W.1.

30th January, 1931.

4

Very many thanks for the copy of the

interesting memorandum by the Governor of Hongkong

on Kowloon and the New Territories enclosed in your

letter of the 9th January. I now return the

photographs accompanying that memorandum, as requested

in your letter.

•

The memorandum would have been even more

valuable to us if Sir William Peel had made a clearer

distinction between the territory ceded to us in 1860

and the New Territories leased to us in 1898. Any

irredentist demands by the Chinese are likely to be

aimed at the latter in the first instance, and a

memorandum in which Hongkong and ceded Kowloon were

treated together as one unit, and the leased

territories as another, would enable us to realise what

would be the effect of severing the latter, in whole

or in part, from the former unit, and help us to

consider what steps could best be taken, or what price

Sir Gilbert Grindle, K.C.M.G., C.B.

it