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NOTHING

38

O.L

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WRITTEN

IN

THIS MARGIN.

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Minutes.

416

have a most damaging effect in the United States. It would also have a very depressing effect on the morale of our own people and would be regarded as tantamount to giving up our interests in China.

..e the viitual

The alternative, to virtually sacrificing of the Hong Kong garrison in the event of war would obviously be a difficult decision and was primarily a military matter. It might involve a loss of prestige. On the other hand resistance even if overcome, might have a tremendous effect on opinion in the United States and might even hasten United States intervention. (Amember of the Committee said that it might also have some direct military advantage in holding up the Japanese for some time and dispersing their forces).

W

I said that the most serious thing which emerged from the paper was the apparently complete failure to provide adequate air raid protection for the civilian population. I could not believe that a problem, which I understood had been solved at Gibraltar in equally difficult circumstances, could not be solved at Hong Kong, and I asked whether it was even now too late to try to remedy matters.

I put to the Committee the suggestion in the last paragraph of Mr. Dening's minute that the situation should be explained frankly to the United States. The Committee said that the position had already been touched on briefly in the conversations with Admiral Ghormley here in London and it would be dealt with in more detail in subsequent conversations. Committee did not feel that a special approach to the United States at this stage would serve any very useful purpose. They hoped that in the forthcoming conversations the United States would accept our plans for the Far East as a bases, substituting the United States Fleet where reference was made to our own.

written

The

The Committee do not require our/views on the paper. The position is that they will now draft a reply to the Secretary of State

for the Colonies and we shall have an opportunity to comment on the draft before it is submitted to the Chiefs of Staff.

J.C. Sterndale Bennett

13th October, 1940.

I think the

Cine

W. Standale

Bennett Both was right. Iis 9. Wathcotas

Conclusions 5x6 al blin

5x6 at the end of his paper

seem to me

anticly mistaken.

now await the committee's

Ur cau

the commitesi de often refly.

It is unpleams to decide

that

Alyan

16/x

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