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I can explain this crypter passage if Weersswy if you care to
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Reference....
minile meld / whe
this draft.
Mr D K Zimms (Hong Kong & Indian Ocean Dept. Mr JS Champion (Gib. & General Dept.
c
COLONIAL DEFENCE CONTRIBUTIONS
(Your minute of 18 Feb.
20
R&R Ind
@
This is a large subject with a long and rather controversial history. I happen to know some of the main outlines, and to have experienced one or two leading cases during previous service in the Colonial Office. But to do your enquiry justice would unavoidably entail quite a bit of work verifying facts and figures and filling in gaps.
2. I am at the moment up to my neck in a big job for PDTD on Ocean Island phosphates, which I have been asked to give top priority to since it is needed in connexion with the impending law-suit against HMG. I doubt if I could tackle your job properly until after Easter. Whether I would be able to do so then depends on my pwn future in the Office, on which I think perhaps Mr. Champion could tell you as much as I can (so I am sending him a copy of this minute - I see you copied yours to G & GD). I hope that from the point of view of relations with Hong Kong such a timetable would not be too late; it hardly sounds a subject on which instant decisions are required. I will of course help if I can.
3.
Meanwhile, you might like to have the following off-the cuff reactions, as general background and to assist consideration of any interim reply you may wish to send to Hong Kong.
Antiquity of the principle
4. The principle that colonies ought (where prxE★★EXÌÌE practicable) to contribute to the cost of their defence is one which British Governments have long sought to apply, though with varying success. The first and most notorious case was the attempt in the mid-18th century to tax the North Ameriaan colonies for this purpose, which led via the Boston tea-party to the Declaration of Independence. Our unwillingness to go on garrisoning Canada a century later was one the factors contributing to the invention of Dominion status in 1867 - our first voluntary decolonisation. India always paid for the Indain Army, right back to the days of Clive and the East India Company (and during the 20th-century wars the Indian Army defended not only India but Britain too, by fighting for us against European enemies in the Middle East). Before 1914 we pushed Australia into inventing the Royal Australian Navy in order to help us concentrate our fleet in home waters. Imperial contributions to defence, in resources & men if not in cash, were an important topic at the Imperial Conferences of 1926 and 1937. Etc., etc.
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(17293) Dd.897465 400m 1/73 G.W.B.Ltd. Gp.863
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