COPY
1.
NOTE
21
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General Hurley seemed to wish to confine the conversation to civil banalities. I took him up with violence about Hong Kong and said that never would we yield an inch of the territory that was under the British Flag. As for the leased territory, in connection with the water supply, that did not come up till 1998 or thereabouts. In the meanwhile we would set up distilling machinery which would give us all the water we wanted and more. The General-Ambassador accepted this without further demur.
2. With regard to the question of using Lend-Lease to prevent us taking necessary action in the Middle East as approved by the Chiefs of Staff, he did not contest the position seriously. I offered to take all the Lend-Lease pistols and weapons away from the soldiers there and supply them again from here after the defeat of the Germans, pointing out that this would involve many months of delay in the advance of the British troops to close contact with the common enemy. He did not seem to contest this.
3.
Generally he seemed very friendly, and was extremely polite. He is rather an old-world
American figure, and I do not think any harm could have been done by my talk with him. We shall see.
W.S.C.
11.4.45.
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