However, I expressed my own opinion that America should use all her resources for the defeat of Japan rather than dissipate them in the reconquest of colonial territory in the rear.

In fact he used the expression "Hongkong will be eliminated from the British Empire only over my dead body". He then said that the British Empire would ask for nothing and would give up nothing and I replied by saying that President Roosevelt had given him the British Empire which, in my opinion, was lost up until the time we entered the war. I added we had given freely of the resources and the lives of America and that I felt that his statement that he would accept nothing and give nothing was logically and factually incorrect.

I said that such a position would also be a complete nullification of the principles of the Atlantic Charter which was reaffirmed by Britain and the Soviet in the Iran Declaration.

At this point Churchill stated that Britain is not bound by the principles of the Atlantic Charter at all.

He sent to me by his secretary an excerpt from his address in Parliament which he had stated was the true position of Britain in regard to the Atlantic Charter.

The Ambassador in China (Patrick J. Hurley), Temporarily in Iran, to the Secretary of State