Butterfield & Swire, addressed the China Committee of Members of Parliament last week, and had a very good audience which included two jor three members of the Upper House and Mr. Envoys Evans, chairman of the Conservative Association.
These discussions are private, but I was told afterwards that Mr. Mitchell spoke well, and that several members said afterwards how much they had been interested in what he said. Mr. Mitchell sails for Shanghai on January 22.
The appointment of Sir Archibald Kerr as Ambassador to China, since unhappily Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen will be unable to return, is a great relief in Far Eastern circles. The F.B.I. Committee had tackled the foreign Office on what was to be the position of our diplomatic representation in China, and M.P.s of the China Committee "got busy" in still more exalted regions. It seems curious that the Foreign Office should not have made an earlier announcement on a question which was bound to cause so much anxiety. But then the F. O. is curious in its ways.
Sir Archibald has a reputation for ability and strength. In fact it was the strength of the note which he drafted and with Lord Allenby delivered to the Egyptian Government on the murder of Sir Lee Stack, which frightened some of the timorous ones in the F. O. and caused him for a while to be rather out of favour. So his appointment seems significant.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.