CO129-606-4 Hong Kong Loan- government grant 1-4-1947 - 2-3-1948 — Page 55

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Enclosure 3.

Leading Article in "South China Morning Post" dated 20.9.47.

The Colonial Secretary in reply to Hon.M, K. Lo's questions on Thursday expressed some faith that a final decision on the complex problem of "Occupation Pay" will not be long delayed. The wish is widely echoed. It is coupled, moreover, with the hope that the final decision will be the correct one. There is little confidence of this -nor is faith in Government strengthened by the statement that the great desideratum is uniformity of treatment throughout the Far Eastern colonies. Said the Colonial Secretary, "although the conditions in the different territories, under which uninterned members of the Government/service had to live, varied in many respects, the treatment to be accorded to interned and non- interned personnel is a problem common to the whole area. The Secretary of State has recently indicated that for the above reasons it has not been possible for him to accept completely the recommendations of the Committes. Various modifications designed to secure a greater degree of uniformity throughout the Far Eastern colonies are now under consideration, and it is hoped that the scheme in its new form will prove acceptable.'

The recommendations of the Committoe not having been published, we are left to guess at the probable consequences of the Secretary of State's craving for uniformity. There are problems within problems, and the policy hitherto has not been conspicuous for equity. The interned servants of the Government have boen paid in full their salaries for the whole war period. Some who had been in Government employ for only a few days have received substantial cheques. Others who left the Colony in time were also remunerated fully. The uninterned are perhaps less entitled to war wages depending upon whether they were employed during the Occupation and whether in trade or by the Japanese; depending also, to some extent, upon their war losses. There is much less excuse, however, for failure to pay Civil Defence personnel for actual war service. failure gives a bad impression. The discrimination in the evacuation of 1940 is not forgotten: and, despite all assurances to the contrary, the community is given to believe that to have been born under the right star is, for some categories, at least, still the primary qualification for good official treatment.

Behind these grievances is

Tho

the greater question of the cost of the war and who is to bear it. The same question has produced much heart-burning in Malaya and elsewhere.

in Malaya and elsewhere. The astonishing position is that the cost of the defence of Hong Kong was apparently not included in the cost of defeating the Axis. It seems that Hong Kong's strugglo and suffering were something apart a sort of private sideshow, for which it is considered this Colony sh uld pay! For many years the community

contributed 20 per cent. of its revenue every year as "Defence Contribution." It made a gift of some two and a half million dollars towards the cost of the Singapore base; and just before the war it gave a lump sum of six million dollars, as well as donations for aeroplanes and other equipment, as its aid to the Imperial war effort. It knew that, when the Japs attacked, the Colony and all in it would be sacrificod to strategic necessity: yet it carried on and its sons took their places in the hopeless defence. To be told now, after the hardships and loss of the

for this and that reason there is difficulty in paying war wages, and that owners of property requisitioned for defence must look to Japan for reparations, is to implant in the public mind a cynical valuation of tho virtues of loyalty.

Occupation, that