CO129-563-18 Sino-Japanese War- stopping of British shipping by Japanese 11-9-1937 - 29-12-1937 — Page 122

...s Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government, and should be returned

to the Foreign Office if not required for official use.

From CHINA.

Commander-in-Chief (China)

Decypher.

9

7th October, 1957.

D.

T/T

7th October, 1987.

R.

9.30 8.m. 8th October, 1987.

10. 302.

123

Addressed to admiralty o. 302 and Commodore Hongkong

No. 564 for Tokyo lo. 40.

Reference messages 491 and 492 from Tokyo concerning question

of providing Japanese ruthorities with information of sailings

of British ships, I agree with His Excellency that this is a

tall order. I have always been careful to ignore any requests

put forward by Japanese for notification of movements such as

in Whangpoo. The present sugestion is referred to previously in Tokyo message lo. 335 to Foreign Office. I strongly deprecate

any avoidable concessions to Japanese unless they are definitely

to our advantage. notification of sailings could be used by

petty Japanese officials as thin end of wedge to control and

obstruct British shipping, all sorts of excuses being raised if

they wished to postpone a sailing, etc. Flea of danger is a

favourite excuse. It is observed that while suggesting this

further measure which will probably have restrictive results

Japanese have not yet given any orders to their fleet to

implement the major arrangements agreed to between the Governments

in regard to closing the Chinese coast to Chinese shipping.

Repeated to Hanking No. 86 and to Foreign Office for

information,