CO129-568-5 War Department requirements for land at Kowloon for hospital 9-12-1937 - 3-3-1938 — Page 8

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.