CO129-592-6 Reports on current situation- including weekly intelligence reports 18-9-1945 - 20-12-1945 — Page 16

Secret and Personal.

16 27

Colonial office,

Downing Street,

London.

13th December, 1945.

Thank you for your secret and Personal

I

letter of the 11th November giving such an encouraging account of progress in Hong Kong. know that we owe much to your courageous decision to go in so promptly, before the Japanese had time to make trouble.

It is a great tribute too to your &dministration that essential services have been so quickly restored and I am gald to know that you have found the Civil Affairs team really useful. They are a a devoted band under MacDougall though I wished their numbers could have been larger.

You

The pressing problem of supplies is one which we naturally very fully appreciate here. I am glad to see that, at the time you wrote, the shops had fair stocks and that food prices were coming down - two points in which Hong Kong is more fortunate than most other places in the world. say that trade and commerce must be opened up without delay, and since you wrote your letter, private trading has, I think, begun again. We welcome this, as I am glad to see you do, and we are sure that it will prove a help to the supply position

Rear Admiral

Cecil Harcourt, CB., CHE.

You

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