CO129-590-11 Commission of Enquiry into irregularities in Immigration Departments 22-4-1941 - 19-12-1941 — Page 260

38.

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staff; rather than draft a letter (as I do all my own drafting on my typewriter anyway) send it out to be typed, using government stationery

which I did not have in sufficient quantity I preferred in cases of

fugitive letters to reply in sequence on the original which comes to

me.

No disrespect was intended in that practice: it is simply, as I

said, time and paper saving. It applies without distinction to all

however friendly I might be with them. In the second place I have had

the most elaborate schemes used to get possession of our forms and I

had good reason to believe that some of our forms were getting into

the hands of unrecognized agencies somehow and I was using every endeavour

to prevent them from obtaining supplies of our forms. It was for that

reason that I made it a practice either myself or through one of my

subordinates to check up and see if the staff for whom permits were

asked did in fact exist. It was a surprise to me therefore that I

discovered that the names of these officers were nowhere given in the

local directories; and my suspicions were heightened even in the case

of the Bank of China, I don't think that all the employees of the

Bank of China who had access to the Bank's paper would be above sus-

picion. I did not know the name of Mr. Sung or that he was an eminent

business man, and I was not aware that the head office of the Bank of

China was in Hong Kong.

With regard to returning unopened an official communication, I had

on many occasions given such notice as T could that applicants were

expected to attend in person, or at any rate to be represented in the

office by members of their families. That was necessary in order that

statements in the applications could be checked by questioning. I have

referred in my main memorandum to the fact that I was dissatisfied and

still an dissatisfied with the looseness of control. We are still, I

hold, giving permits far too much as a matter of course. All the in-

formation I have been able to gather regarding immigration control in

other places bears this out. A person is compelled in every case to

appear in person. I hold to that practice as far as I reasonably can.

Chairman: Do you regard the treatment which you extended in this case to

the Bank of China as the courteous treatment that every member of the

public has a right to expect from every branch of the government?

A.

Up to the point when I returned that letter with my footnote, yes. From

that point onwards I should answer the question by saying that I did not

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