From 1927 onwards the Council under the leadership of successive chairmen, Mr. Fessenden, Mr. Arnhold, Mr. Bell General Macnaghten and Mr. Franklin, had been engaged until 1937 in successive series of negotiations with the successive mayors of the Chinese Municipality, for the purpose of arriving at a modus vivendi on the Outside Roads.
Mr. Justice Feetham in his report 1n 1931 reviewed the whole question d formulated tentative plans for the settlement of the dispute, In 1929 at the Ratepayers' Meeting, Mr. Stirling Fessenden, then chairman of the Council, in his address referred to the Extra-Settlement Roads problem as follows:—"The question of "outside roads" is of the most vital importance to tie foreign community and, from the Chinese point of view, equally important to them, and one which we had hoped would have been settled long ego in a reasonably satisfactory manner, "The negotiations regarding this matter have always been and are at present in the hands of the representatives of the Foreign Powers and the Nationalist Government, but the Council in so far as it lies in its power, is exerting itself to the utmost to assist in securing a just and equity able settlement of this vexatious question.
"No appreciable progress in the solution of this problem has been made during the past year or more, and at the moment there appears to be little or no prospect of a satistactory settlement of this question in the near future."
Every year the Chairman of the Council continued to express gloomy prospects about any possible solution.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.