CO129-567-4 Traffic of arms to China and Japanese air-raids on Kowloon-Canton railway 3-1-1938 - 3-5-1938 — Page 28

1883

92

93

Brussels telegram 26.

F.O.

F.3960/1/10

Despatch 19 from Canton Railway.

-

94

Gov.

28

-19.4.38.

Air raids on Canton-Kowloon

Put by.

20

(Intld.)

H...C. at once.

Secret

11.4.38.

*I'm afraid it

is rather confused!

Ref.76. Transmits returns of war materials etc. as requested.

This is a vast mass of documents, out of

which it is difficult to produce any order. However,

we asked for it!

I have found it difficult to deduce very

much from the documents, except that up to now

Germany has clearly been the largest supplier of arms

to China (through Hong Kong), with U.S.A. second and

Great Britain a poor third. Belgium has supplied a

fairly steady amount and Italy only a comparatively

minor quantity.

It is impossible to deduce the weight or

value of the munitions sent by each country and the

only simple way of making any estimate is by the

number of consignments, an admittedly very rough method. At the risk of having too many graphs, I

have therefore added one showing the number of

consignments sent by each of the main countries during

the period of hostilities. Other countries have sent

odd consignments e.g. Sweden, Switzerland,

Czechoslovakia, but in order to keep the graph

*

as clear as possible, they are not shown there.

The