CO129-622-3 War damage compensation- requisitioned railway stores and materials 19-1-1948 - 31-12-1948 — Page 25

Dean

54447/5/48.

120/overseas/300 (I of L(0)).

Colonial of ice,

The Church House,

Great Smith Street,

S. W. 1.

31st December, 1948.

25

Dear Seymour.

Thank you for your letters of the

30th November and 10th December about the Chinese and Hong Kong Cover.ment claims against His Majesty's Government in respect of railway materials requisitioned in Hong Kong in 1941.

2.

The

Paragraph 2 of your letter says that Item 3 of the claim by the British section of the Kowloon-Canton Railway appears to be based on a misapprehension and that the missing materials necessary to complete fabrication of the 600 Chinese-owned wagons were not in fact manufactured in Hong Kong, but in India. total claim may thus Le reduced by the large amount of some £79,000 and we must of course explain to Hong Kong as fully as possible why this is so. The telegram 0121 of 1/7/41, of which you sent me a copy with your letter of the 10th December, does not (in the absence of background knowledge) as ist very much in this connection and we should therefore be grateful for any further information which you may be able to provide from your records.

It would, for instance, be helpful if we could explain the origin of the figure £108,000 which appears in both Hong Kong's claim and in the telegram referred to above. Is it the case that for this sum the Kowloon-Canton Railway (Dritish section) contracted

COLITEL G.V. S. VI. UK.

in