4
S.S. "ANKING" (Between Hongkong
and Singapore),
8th September, 1941.
My dear Gent,
My wife and I left Hongkong two days ago and I now find time to repair to some extent some omissions on my part.
In the first place I want to thank you personally most gratefully for the abundant help and sympathy which you gave to my wife, thus getting her to me far sooner than could otherwise be the case. She is writing to you herself so I will leave to her the description of her eleven weeks voyage which ended on the route Penang Rangoon Chungking Hongkong! Please accept my most sincere thanks for all that you did for her.
Secondly, my personal news is that I am no worse than I was two months ago: but 200/300 yards is the limit of my ordinary ambulation at any one stretch. Otherwise I can say that my powers, such as they are, are unimpaired: I can think and sit in an office-chair and conduct and Executive or Legislative
This as ever. statement, of course, is made with a view to getting a job of war-work, which I would willingly take up without pay if lodging and travelling expenses were found.
Council as well
or badly
-
So much for personal matters. There are two or three subjects of an official nature on which I feel that I should let you have my views. In the rush of the last weeks there was no time in which to write despatches. You will, no doubt, send Young copies of anything in this letter which you may think should be communicated to him.
VERY CONFIDENTIAL. THE CRESSALL ANTI-GRAFT COMMISSION
I
You know by this time, I take it, the story of the Bank Window and Mr. Layden, late Overseer, P.W.D. The inquiry into that case threw some suspicion on Capt. Hobbs, late Engineer, P.W.D., who had been seconded to A.R.P. work. had inquiries made but the result was that Hobbs seemed to have been cleared. However, before long Alabaster came along with a lot of incriminating facts which resulted in the appointment of a Commission with Cressall as Chairman and two unofficial members, a leading Accountant and the Manager of the Hongkong Tramway Co. Hobbs, as you know, shot himself rather than face certain condemnation but other things had come out meanwhile and several Government Officers are under the gravest suspicion of having taken bribes or presents. I will mention no names: if they are found guilty you will know soon enough. How far into the Civil Service it will be proved that graft extends or has extended no one can say at the moment, but I instructed Cressall to probe every suspicious matter, regardless of whose heads would fall into the basket as the result. I fear that at least two cadets may be shewn to have taken bribes, though not in connection with A.R.P., investigations into which still hold the stage.
It has, of course, been common talk here for years that certain Government Departments were rotten with graft, the Police, I.& E., P.W.D., and Urban Council being most commonly cited. Three years ago I made an ineffectual attempt to catch some of the grafters but could not get the necessary
evidence
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