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the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that Mr. Grey now has
access to his own books upstairs. Mr. Grey's doubts about
his health seem also to have been set at rest.
Co-operation of Reutere
5. Our handling of this case will continue as hitherto to
depend greatly on your own co-operation. I hope that what
I have told you will satisfy you that I am anxious to do all
I can to secure the release of Mr. Grey, short of taking
mecaures which in my considered judgment would be highly damaging
in Hong Kong. I have instructed the Head of Far Eastern
Department to continue to keep you closely informed of develop-
ments. Even if we foresee little prospect of progress before
Sepgember, this does not of course imply that we shall cease
in the meantime to keep up pressure on the Chinese, particularly
as regards the detailed conditions of Mr. Grey's detention.
Consular Access: Further Exchange of Visita (if Er.Long raises the
point) Naturally I do not rule out consideration of a further
exchange of visits, by our Charge d'Affaires in Peking to Mr. Grey
and by representatives of the New China News Agency in Hong Kong
to the eleven news workers; but we should have to choose our
6.
time with care. I have in mind the difficulty of taking
measures to solve disoreetly the problem of the eleventh news
worker in the glare of publicity that a consular visit to Mr.Grey
will inevitably provoke. And following on from this, it might
be best not to have a visit to Mr. Grey until we are in a position
to give him a broad hint that we have reasonable grounds for
expecting that his ordeal should end in September,
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