Letter from Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, Ankara, to Thomas Balston, 1939 June 2 : autograph manuscript signed.

Thanking Balston for the books he has sent him, remarking that he has actually had a few days to read them while Mary and his daughter Alethea are away in Istanbul, and writing that (Oliver St. John Gogarty's) "Tumbling in the hay" amused him, and mentioning his work on the Anglo-Turkish Declaration; expressing his indignation at a recent article in the Spectator on the subject of Diplomats, remarking "Why should the possession of an old school tie be held to be a disqualification for any useful employment."; informing Balston that "Norton's great book" has been rejected by the advisors to the Oxford University Press; remarking that he finds it tiresome that "one can't use one's reasoning powers & rely on their logic", and that "Logic seems to point so incontrovertibly in the direction of peace, especially now that the risks Germany would run are so terrific as to be risks no longer.", but that it all depends "on whether Hitler's entourage tell him the truth."; mentioning a "little German Charge d'Affaires here ... who must be the red-hottest Nazi in creation", observing that "I hadn't really understood quite how Nazism could de-humanize a man till I met him", and relating an argument with him concerning "the means by which the B. Empire had been created.".