A summary of a meeting of five hundred husbands who had been compelled more than a year ago to evacuate their wives and families from Hongkong, and of a broadcast made subsequently by the Governor of the Colony appeared in yesterday's issue, and today in the correspondence columns is published a letter from a Hongkong resident, who is well known in Shanghai, which gives further details of what appears to, have been a' somry^ muddle. The responsibility: for issuing the evacuation order rests less upon the Hongkong Government than it does upon the Government in Britain.
upon the-Cólony's' authorities: for -the " ih~ latter must have been' 4 SP tendent It goes without. saying however, ihát the formation upon which they based their decision, which events have proved to have been premature, to say the least. It is possible that in the light of the tension in the Far East which has followed the Japanese "protection" move into Indo-China and the "freezing" orders which have been issued by the United States and British Governments, the husbands of Hongkong will feel less inclined to quarrel with the wisdom of the evacuation than they might have felt a month ago. This, however, does not alter the fact that the original order was ill-timed, the tier for carrying it out was crude and caused unnecessary hardship, and loopholes were left of which the wives of officials friends were quick to take In dealing with later representa-would consider any collaboration involving the delivery to Germany of control of any ie French colonies or of the. African coas* a direct menace to the security of the Western Hemisphere. If action is taken by Britain or the United States to immobilize those West African r*; under German control Vichy broadcast speech to America promise that the inch fleet and bases would remain French? Just another instance of his empty promises.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.