CO129-556-16 Anti-piracy measures 17-1-1935 - 27-7-1935 — Page 17

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regular naval and military forces. It would be worse than

useless if the companies, in order to comply with our

requirements, were obliged to engage local British

unemployed. I would rather have the present aussian

guards than the type of British beachcomber who would

be likely to accept such service at the wages offered.

And the same remarks apply to the Japanese. If men

from the British regular forces are not available I

think that the Aussian community remains the best

recruiting ground for these ships' guards. After all,

in the "Tungchow" case the Russians did their best and

one of the was killed fighting.

8.

It is with the greatest reluctance that I

deprecate any proposal for dealing with this piracy

menace put forward by so eminent an authority as tir

Frederic Dreyer, but I am afraid that if the certificate

schese were, as proposed, on a voluntary basis one of

two things would happen. Our requirements would either

be stiff enough to provide a real protection against

piracy, when the companies would be driven by economic

pressure to ignore them, or else the scheme would prove

inadequate in practice and would merely tend to remove

the responsibility and odius for piracies from the

shipping companies to the department issuing the

certificate. I would not like to place this Consulate-

General in that position. On the other hand there would

be many obstacles in the way of making the scheme

compulsory.

9. There is also the question of such ships as

the Canadian "Empress" liners. They carry Chinese

crows

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