CO129-560-15 Traffic of arms to China 18-2-1937 - 15-11-1937 — Page 8

8

37 5.0.5

For My

barten.

в

H.2. tel

38 H. X. til 192

15-9-37.

my pushes of que mache by

15-9.3).

при 33 yum

37 Hx macho

H2 fant is not conserard & Bartist rando

x

& panchable.

thin 12.

There has been considerable confusion about

this question of the supply of gas masks to Canton

and after speaking to Mr. Henderson of the Foreign

Office and to Mr. Messent of Matheson and Company,

I understand that the position is as follows.

The Nanking Government requested Canton

to import a quantity of gas masks through Hong Kong

and Canton approached the Hong Kong Government

accordingly. There appears to have been some

misunderstanding by the Colonial Government, who may

have thought that the request was for a supply of

stock

Their own supply

gas masks from their own souses

is, in fact, rather short but it is probable that

they did not wish to refuse the Chinese request

a)

directly, so they informed Canton that (huchao for

When

the import of these masks would be required.

this was produced they demanded a further

authentication by the Embassy, though this is only

required for imports of war material, which does not

include gas masks in the normal. way.

The next step was that Canton approached

the Commercial Secretary at Hong Kong, who telegraphed

direct to the D.O.T. as in the copy at (37) so that

the matter could be arranged direct with a commercial

concern