CO129-590-6 Liaison between Hong Kong Government and British Ambassadors in China and Japan 8-11-1940 - 1-2-1941 — Page 7

C.O.

REGISTERED No.

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54071/41.

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on Parku

ENCLOSURES

FURTHER ACTION

LETTER

SENT

Dear Ashley Clarke,

Colonial Office DATE

Downing Street, S. 7.1. 1st February, 1941.

Dening had a word with me yesterday about the matter of closer liaison between His Majesty's Ambassadors in China and Japan on the one hand and the Governments of Hong Kong and the Straits Settlements on the other. I hope we shall not let any competition develop between the more restricted Hong Kong project which we suggested and the wider and rather different proposal for a travelling Counsellor in the Far East. We fully appreciate the useful service which the latter would contribute, and we support the suggestion as rather a longer range plan than the one with which we were more immediately concerned, but we hope that you will not displace the urgently desirable step of an appointment at Hong Kong. Eventually your travelling Counsellor may find himself able to take over the function of diplomat at Hong Kong. But in the immediate future it seems to us so important to keep the British Representatives in China, Hong Kong and Japan very closely in line. You have with us and the defence authorities contemplated the possibility in a state of increasing tension in the Far East of preventing a local incident developing into war, and I believe that if there were such an incident the Japanese would be more likely to stage it in Hong Kong than elsewhere. We cannot, I suggest, afford to wait in Hong Kong several months for a travelling Counsellor to become available.

Yours sincerely,

(Sgd. ) G.E.J. Gent.

To

H. ASHLEY CLARKE, S.

(6094) Wt. 25403-113 40,000 ea. 2 sorts 9/40 T.S. 695