[
    {
        "id": 212615,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1991",
        "page_number": 169,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "I should like here to explain that the Japanese intelligence service is efficient; very little that goes on in China is not quickly known to it. But obviously considerations of security, no less than a courteous regard for a great Ally, require a severe discretion in what may or may not be mentioned while a war is still in progress; unperceived by the reader there will be gaps in the story which follows, a story of some minor assistance given to our Chinese Allies in the 3rd War Zone by the British, when themselves hard-pressed during 1942. For similar reasons, where persons are concerned, I propose to refer to them by their Christian names.\n\nI had asked that the Chinese government should provide me with an interpreter for my trip; but Michael was much more than that. He had been educated in Peking and at the Chelu University in Tsinanfu, and was the type of modern young Chinese patriot, on whose enthusiasm, integrity, and sense, the future of China depends. The horizon of these young Chinese is only too often limited by the fact that not only have they never travelled outside China, so that their knowledge of the foreigner is confined to the few they may have met in their schools or in their immediate environment, but also they know so little of their own enormous country. The displacement of schools brought about by the Japanese aggression has helped much to overcome the second difficulty; and it is to be hoped that far more extensive opportunities will be provided after the war to enable the youth of China to visit foreign countries. In the past, by reason of proximity, Japan has received most Chinese students; followed by the United States, where special endowments, arising initially from the excessive claim made for indemnity at the time of the Boxer trouble, and the facility of “earn while you study”, have attracted students. A few, far too few, have come to England.\n\nMichael spoke fluent English, had seen much of his own country, and for his years carried a wise head on his shoulders; he had, moreover, a most engaging personality. For a year he was my constant companion, on whose advice I came to rely much. I found also awaiting me at Kweilin members of General Ku Chu Tung's staff. We left for Hengyang by train, and thence motored a thousand kilometres to Shangjao, the headquarters of the 3rd War Zone. I was the first foreign officer, Russian liaison officers apart, to visit the 3rd War Zone in two years: I was, in fact, a visible token of the assistance which China might now expect from her new allies, and my reception was correspondingly cordial. I was shown everything; the Arsenal, in a cave; The Prisoners of War cage, where some twenty Japanese were kept pending transfer further west;",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213970,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1997",
        "page_number": 39,
        "title": "RAS-1997",
        "content_text": "4\n\naloof on his return. The present writer can vouch for his active approval of an African-inspired experiment whereby departmental administrative officers in the urban areas would collect and transmit upwards a monthly 'intelligence digest' of local opinion, morale and responses to government action or inaction, and of attitudes to prominent local figures and to Chinese or foreign affairs: this was meant to supplement what was collected in their own specialist manners by the HK Police Special Branch (SB), the New Territories Administration (NTA), the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO)'s Political Adviser (PA) and the Security Liaison Officer (SLO). Some of what was collected may have been too near the knuckle, some was rather too easily discounted as mere \"gossip,\" important though that might be as a reflection of influential belief at the grass roots, and some may have hurt the dignity of those who had the existing duty of intelligence-gathering. The governor was persuaded to drop the experiment as proving trivial.\n\nBut Trench also showed interest in another interloping proposal that, in the absence of any generalist government institutions to supplement the Secretary for Chinese Affairs (SCA)'s advisory staff (who liaised with the various kai fong (Neighbourhood) Welfare Associations, Clansmens' Associations and Residents' Associations, which were often self-perpetuating), District Officers (DOs) should be appointed in the urban areas; these should have certain executive functions, fewer than those of their colleagues in the New Territories so as not to encroach on the licensing prerogatives of the Urban Council, but sufficient to ensure that all should know of their existence and, above all, of where their offices were. Primarily they should oversee and co-ordinate the activities of the various professional and technical departments in their bailiwicks, but also, like paternalistic mandarins, inquire into, report upon and seek answers to the needs and concerns of the inhabitants. This suggestion was effectively smothered by a DCS who was unable to understand what such DOs might achieve in a city that existing institutions did not already adequately do: the concept of such junior, peripheral, government officers being responsive to people, as opposed to being mere executive agents responsible for essential infrastructural public services, was alien. Apart from the SCA's and District Commissioner New Territories (DCNT)'s contacts with often self-appointed élites, there was little by way of direct exchange with the man in the street: the same DCS once said, \"Government must, of",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579",
        "rank": 0
    }
]