Living in one of the countries that has abandoned British gongs, I have to say that I understood the quote to mean exactly what tsuwm did, and I'l wager good money that the writer did mean exactly that - the gongs themselves were considered evidence of British mingiess, and so dropped, as being of no consequence. Perhaps living here made it easy, but I'm surprised that anyone could interpret the comment differently - its meaning was crystal clear to me, and I would just about guarantee that if you asked 100 K1W1s to read the statement, 90 of them would say the same thing.