CO129-590-25 Accounts of events leading up to surrender and subsequent treatment of prisoners- etc 23-4-1942 - 28-9-1943 — Page 199

prising.

18.

227

But when all this has been said, I had no doubt whatever

that the immediate cause of the fall of H.K. was simply that

the enemy were too numerous and too well-equipped.

the men, the guns and the planes.

They had

Every modern military

advantage lay with them. On Christmas morning perhaps 8000

utterly exhausted a British soldiers faced some thing over

20000 fresh and lavishly equipped Japanese. The Japanese may

or may not be masterly tacticians.

the attack on H.K. was, it seemed to me, that, holding four

aces, they do not revoke.

All they proved during

If the immediate cause of H.K's surrender was plain

Japanese superiority in weight and numbers, the deeper

handicap underlying the colony's whole defence effort from

1939 was its non-acceptance until much too late of the

Chungking government's desire (patent over the last two years

at least) for genuine co-operation. The dire British need

for such co-operation was proved when the attack came :

during the siege the organised influence of the Kuoming stang

had not been very whole-heartedly behind the colonial

authorities from the start, internal order could almost

if

certainly not have been maintained for more than a few days.

It was a forlorn hope (as some British and many Chinese

kept pointing out) to attempt to defend H.K. in 1940 or 1941

without/