COPY
C.S.0. 13/3371/47. W..F. 2/24/951/47.
43
Hon. C.S.
The secretary has med me to answer this minute.
The Committee do not meet until nearly another fortnight and, as an early reply by telegraph is requested, I feel I should answer you forthwith and then discuss at our next meeting.
The position regarding relief to Mrs. Eileen Tinson is that soon after the draft of £50 (half-early payment - mentioned in (9) and (10) ) was sent, we received a letter from the China Association suggesting we pay, in addition to the annual grant of £100, a sum to cover medical expenses. These amounted to about 100. The Committee decided to increase the annual grant to £2.0 and another draft of £100 was sent to her on 2nd June. The China Association was informed by letter of the same date of the decision and on 14th June wrote acknowledging out letter.
(12) is dated 12th June and I feel that the informa- tion given by the China Association in para.3 was passed to the S. of 8. before the Association learned of our second grant.
#ith regard to para.4 I fail to see that there are exceptional circumstances in which Mr. Tinson met his death. He was in the A.R.P. (Communications section) and obtained a few hours off duty, He availed himself of this leave to return to his house (with the very natural desire to see whether all was in order). Most unfortunately he was caught there in the battle and killed. Many persons must have been killed in Hong Kong under somewhat similar circumstances.
The request in para.4 that any award should be retrospective from the date of the death was originally made in the concluding paragraph of the S. of S's cable (1). If we had sufficient funds to do so then, in all fairneas, we ought to make similar payments in a very large number of cases but frankly, unless we dig deeply into our capital, we cannot afford it. Cur early expenditure on relief is now not far short of £240,000: our annual income which arises from investment of the capital is not quite half this. Expenditure at the present rate may increase somewhat in thennext few years but should then begin to diminish. We are getting nothing by way of subscriptions from the public: we are in the dark as to what (if any) further contribution Government will make. e must, therefore, 'cut our coat according to out cl th'.
The
The contents or para.2 of (12) startle me. principles contained in the telegram referred to were laid down by the S. of 9. at the time when the Hong Kong Government had in contemplation a personal injuries (Civilian) Scheme analagous to the U.K. Scheme. We dropped that idea and in its place set up a War Memorial Fund to which the public has now subscribed more than half. The benefits we can afford to give are far more limited both in range and amount. Under the U.. •
Scheme, compensation for war inj ries is
payable as of right and irrespective of the means of the injured ppensán. This is not so here.
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