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question of instituting legal proceedings against Captain
Pritchard. At the same time we felt that we only knew one
side of the case and that there might be circumstances in it
which rendered a prosecution desirable and which justified
the result of that prosecution.
The final decision reached
therefore was (1) that we should tell the China Coast Officers
Guild that we had no power to intervene in the matter, and
(2) that we should not attempt to carry the case further by
inquiries at Hong Kong or otherwise.
The fact that the Officers' (Merchant Navy) Federation
and the Honourable Company of Master Mariners have now taken
up the case may be regarded as giving some support to our
original feeling that the case is not altogether a satis-
factory one; but our official position remains as before and
we quite see that you probably have no option to inform the
two organisations in question that the Secretary of State
sees no reason to differ from the opinion expressed by the
Government.
At the same time, I think you will agree that
in the circumstances, it will probably be best to send a
reply which avoids going into details on matters which might
/become
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