letter
HKK 5/17
JZ
Yd.
dkk.
18/0
Swan.
A. H. Stevant
Hong Kong
You will see that the enclosed Despatch about
development aid to the dependant territories is not
even addressed to Hong Kong. However, I am told
that we posted it so indiscriminately that this may
not be the first you, or at least your Department,
have seen of it: please forgive us if this should
be so.
We certainly intended that you should get
copies in due course, if only to give your offices
information about the procedure for providing develop-
ment aid after the Colonial Development and Welfare
Acts expire. But we had no such unimaginative inten-
tion as to include you in the general distribution and
leave you to discover for yourselves how little in
present circumstances the circular has to do with
you. It is of course no easier to compass Hong Kong
and St. Helena, for example, in the same circular
about aid than to send Dives and Lazarus equally
appropriate financial guidance in one letter!
2. You are well aware that it is very much an
essential element in the doctrine of the Ministry
of Overseas Development to give aid to the needier
territories. There is room for argument who are the
needy but I do not think, particularly after your
latest Budget, that you would claim that Hong Kong
was among them. I do not really want to argue the
principle at all but the fact is that so long as
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