CO129-579-7 Sino-Japanese War- shipping on Pearl River 4-1-1939 - 9-6-1939 — Page 98

IMPORTANT

SECRET

From:

Governor, Hong Kong

CYPHER

To:

Con sul-General, Canton (13)

Dated: 10th February, 1939.

98

(4)

Your telegram 34.

Action taken here was in conformity with the

terms of my telegram No.6 to Secretary of State repeated

to you as No.1 and presumably communicated to your

Japanese colleague.

While this Government has every wish to support

you in your endeavours to re-open the Pearl River to

trade it feels bound to point out that the restrictions

in Hong Kong about which the Japanese are complaining

are restrictions which are imposed alike on British trading

vessels and on those of all foreign States having business

here. All we ask in the Pearl River is to exercise our

normal and treaty rights and while we are fully prepared to

allow in Hong Kong any State to exercise its normal and

customary rights, we cannot be expected to grant to the

Japanese more than their rights here in exchange for less than

our rights there.

In International Law even men-of-war, and a

fortiori trading vessels on Government Charter cannot do

what they like in foreign waters. "They are expected to

comply voluntarily with the laws of the littoral States

with regard to order in the ports, the places for casting

anchor, sanitation and quarantine, customs, and the like"