CO129-580-1 Sino-Japanese War- handing over of suspected terrorists to Japanese authorities 1-5-1939 - 24-8-1939 — Page 165

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results that may imperil the safety of concession and lives of Chinese who live inside it, The events at Kulangsu are a pointer to what may happen at Tientsin and then at Shanghai. On the receipt of your telegram No. 94 I made some suggestions to Consul-General as to how best to dispose of present cases (see my telegram No. 43).

In a personal telegram which I received yesterday he said he would be failing in his duty if he did not express his honest conviction that if very serious trouble was to be avoided the only way of dealing with the four persons referred to in second and third paragraphs of his telegram No. 180 to you would be to hand them over to de facto authorities on production of proper warrant and he asked for authority to deal with "other persons arrested" (igrp. undec.] cases hereafter arising) in manner already suggested by him.

This imposes upon me a decision from which I confess I flinch. The problem reduces itself to a repugnant simplicity to sacrifice the four or perhaps even more scapegoats in the hope that by this sacrifice Japanese may be persuaded to hold their hand for a time at any rate and give concession a breathing space. offers little hope of freedom from more and equally repugnant sacrifices in the early future. I mean demands from Japanese for surrender of this person or that on evidence as convincing to them and as unconvincing to us as in present case.

But it

The term "hand over for trial by district court on production of a proper warrant" may sound all right but in fact it is an

The truth is entirely misleading way of putting the question. that we should be handing over these four men to be killed and

that