Reel 17427 - Page 1537

Dublin Core

Title

Reel 17427 - Page 1537

Description

Quality Score: unknown
Needs Review: No
OCR Confidence: 0%
Character Count: 2088
Word Count: 349

Source

https://image-uab.canadiana.ca/iiif/2/69429%2Fc0xw47r1st1j/full/max/0/default.jpg

Date

1941/1945

Rights

Public Domain

Format

image/jpeg

Language

fra

Text Item Type Metadata

Text

From: Shanghai (MARGERIE)
To: Vicky
27 May 1944
FAD

#426-430 (5 parts of a 6 part message)*

Before leaving Shanghai, after having headed our Consulate General for 3½ years, I feel that I should at least send a telegraphic account of our situation in that city, as it is impossible for me to file a report with the Department.

1. It seems to me to be useless to stress again the importance of the establishment which France still has there even after the retrocession of our concession. All pertinent information in this connection was given by the Ambassador and by me in our telegrams during July and August, 1943.

However painful it may be for us to have to abandon a Company which has been going for a hundred years after --20-- to say that the future of the French in Shanghai is to a great extent assured.

2. It one excludes the forces of occupation (500 French officers and soldiers with their wives and children numbering 200, and 1500 Annamites); as well as 220 missionaries and people of religious orders, our colony comprises about 2000 French nationals, including families.

3. 200 people are employed in the different --Services which the state or the French authorities maintain in Shanghai: the Embassy, the Consulate General, the Naval Base, the College, the Centre français and Welfare Fund; the consular police, the Pasteur Institute, etc. 800 of our compatriots are attached to our Banks or to our (Commercial?) firms as well as to companies or organizations of all kinds. This latter group (as well as 210 Frenchmen without any regular profession) are suffering more and more from the almost complete cessation of economic life which followed upon the opening of hostilities in the Pacific. Right now some hundred Frenchmen live only on aid from the Benevolent Society founded by the Consulate. This organization is supported exclusively by local resources. It is now spending 2,500,000 CRB dollars a year for our needy compatriots, the number of whom increases steadily.

5. The principal element of our colony still

-Continued-

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