CO129-567-4 Traffic of arms to China and Japanese air-raids on Kowloon-Canton railway 3-1-1938 - 3-5-1938 — Page 194

[This 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.

Mr. MacKillop, (Hankow).

195

Decypher.

3rd February, 1938.

D.

(Wireless)

3rd February, 1958.

R.

7.30 p.m.

3rd February, 1938.

No. 101.

Help! What

doc, ut meum,

Hol

Thanks

0:0:0:0:0

Addressed to Embassy Shanghai telegram No. 112 of

February 3rd.

liy telegram No. 104.

Two important elements in situation are (1) reluctance of provincial authorities to permit National Government to function as a centralized controlling force.

This applies

here and also in Szechuen. Government in no sense controls or co-ordinates activities in individual remaining provinces but rather exists as a body extraneous to them. (2) Danger of purely military Government being formed as a consequence of (1). If this organisation on military as opposed to civil basis can be a little more effectively centralised and co- ordinated. But the centrifugal tendency has to be reckoned

with here as well.

National Government as a civilian authority is in my opinion already non-existent. Dr. Kung is obliged to try to do practically everything except in purely military matters. His civilian colleagues might in the main just as well not be here. Activities of some of them, necessarily confined to theories and publicity, are indeed actually prejudiced because of effect on credit. Dr. Kung is working hard and is doing very much better than might be expected but the situation cannot continue, having regard especially to series of shocks he is receiving about finance, customs, supply of material, prospects of foreign assistance, and so on.

In the present confusion only two of them seem quite excluded. If there is reconstruction in these or other new surroundings presuming effective centralisation of civilian government, if any, which I fear must be regarded as having been condemned to death when it was forced to leave Nanking. Second is efficient prosecution of the war.

I need not therefore further burden you with further appreciations and I shall limit myself in future to narration of events not recorded in the Press or Agency messages, to comments published, so far as necessary and to reports on transaction of such official business as there may be to do.

Repeated to Foreign Office.