RET.
8 KORE T.
8
Ceylon, 24 December, 1987.
sir,
I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your
letter No.861/55 (Secret) dated the 9th December, 1937,
on the subject of a site for a military hospital in
Kowloon.
His Excellency
2. It is of course impossible for me at this distance
of time to remember with exactitude my many conversations
with the General Officer Commanding the British Troops in
China: but His Excelleney's statement that I expressed the
view that the proposed Kowloon site should be handed over
to the War Department "free, apart from necessary cash
expenditure incurred or to be incurred by Government in
preparing the site," leaves me in no doubt whatever that
I did express my view in those or equivalent terms.
3. I am however equally without doubt that this, and
any other view that I may have expressed in unrecorded
conversation, was expressed as my personal opinion and not
as a gubernatorial judgment. Indeed I never finalized an
official view in such matters without the most careful
Sir Geoffry Alexander Stafford Northcete, K.O.M.O.,
consultation
Hong Kong.