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was not lessened by Government's insistence that all appointments
should be made not only, as is usual throughout the Government
service, on the basis of probation that might, subject to fitness, be converted later to permanency, but without assured prospect of that permanency. It may not be necessary to explain the unfortunate result of such a policy; if it is, then the result which I feared
was that which was proved in the event, namely, that candidates were more imbued with the idea of making money while the good conditions
setting lasted than with that of selling down to a life work as servants of
the Government, or, in other words, temptations to dishonesty, always
more plentiful in a new and imperfectly organised department with no traditions behind it, were greater in the case of employees who had
little to gain in prospect by resisting the temptations.
On the clerical and administrative side there was little to
complain about in the quality of the men supplied me, if we except
for the moment the shroffs; I was disappointed in the hope which
I was led to entertain of securing the help of Mr. McDouall, and my
administrative assistance was therefore reduced to Mr. J.H.B. Lee,
and, as I have already made plain, the extent of his assistance was
reduced by the time during which he was removed from the department
for other duties. I do not count my deputy in Macau, Mr.H.D. Bryan,
the British Consul, in this category; for on account of his lack of
acquaintance with the methods of the Hong Kong Government, he must
rather be reckoned among those whom it was my duty to train for their posts. In parenthesis, let me remark that r. Bryan had his own
difficulties; until now I have not been able to secure an up-to-date
copy of the Government's General Orders for my own use, much less
to supply a copy for the guidance of Mr. Bryan, and have myself to
rely on my memory, and to give him in letters the gist of such orders
as I found him from time to time to be unwittingly transgressing.
Fy clerical staff, whose work, I must explain, was specialised
and quite apart from immigration control work itself, consisted of
Mr. Chan Kwok wing already mentioned, ten other clerks, and a
variable number of shroffs, never more than four in the Head Office,
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