CO129-560-17 Kowloon- expropriation of Chinese property 6-1-1937 - 4-9-1937 — Page 97

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Enclosure No.6.

5/53557/36

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transmitting their representations to you.

2.

In order that you may be in full possession of

the actual facts at the close of the year I enclose a

Report written by Mr. G. S. Kennedy-Skipton, District

Officer, South, and dated the 5th January current.

3.

The question now arises as to whether we should

pay any attention to the Wai Chiao Pu's shadowy reference

to "treaty provisions". If we did do so I could only

recommend action along the lines of the third paragraph

of my Secret Despatch dated the 10th November, 1936, i.e.

that we should reaffirm the Order of the Queen in Council

dated the 27th December, 1899, and say that we can brook no interference by the Wai Chiao Pu in a purely domestic and municipal matter.

But their

4. In dealing with any other people than the Chinese I would counsel some such reply. face-saving and grouse-loving psychology, a compound of the superiority and inferiority complexes, and their penchant for the juridical renders it, in my judgment, both unnecessary and undesirable in their case. I would much prefer tacitly to ignore the reference to the Treaty and to stand by the dictates of hygiene which, as you will see from the District Officer's report, have already been largely met. A number of articles and

letters are appearing on this subject in the Hong Kong and Canton press; in all of which I detect the hidden hand of Dr. Philip Tyau, the Special Delegate for Foreign Affairs at Cant on. Nothing would, I think, gratify his personal vanity more than an answer which might induce the Central Government to prosecute the Treaty argument with more detail and assiduity. Any such development would of course react unfavourably on the relations between Canton and Hong Kong which it has been my policy, with