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(8).
Now, as to this last object, there is one section of the community perhaps of more vital importance than any other, und that is the members of the mechanical and engineering trades, the skilled British labour in the dockyards and manufac- tories, the engineers on local steamers and steam-tramways. They are the back- bone of the Colony in time of peace, and their professional knowledge would be a potent factor in its defence in war time. Many of them are already members of the Engineer and other Companies of the Volunteer Force.
I base my justification of such a school as is proposed principally on the good it would do the Colony by strengthening this vitally important class. To justify its creation, such a school must shew itself an addition to the local and imperial armoury: it is no question of granting a compassionate allowance to one section of the community, however deserving.
B.-There are in the Colony, according to the recent Census, 175 boys and 202 girls between the ages of 5 and 16. Few of these are children of the comparatively wealthy classes who can afford to live at the Peak. Most of them have parents of the professions above enumerated. To such parents there are three courses open. Either they can send their children home to be educated; or they can avail them- selves of the existing schools; or they can let their children grow up with- out instruction. As regards the first alternative, it is simply out of the question on the score of expense in most cases, the expense not only of sending them home but of the maintenance of two establishments out of one income. But in the few cases where they can be so sent home, they are probably lost to the Colony it is at least as likely as not they will never return. The second alter- native before them is to send their children to Queen's College or some other of the local schools. Apart from the educational question, and speaking of the climate, there seems no particular reason why children should not grow up in Hongkong. And it is hard to exaggerate the value to the Colony and the Empire's Far- Eastern interests which there would be in a thoroughly acclimatised, teclinically trained, well educated nucleus of mechanicians and engineers, who having lost nothing of the natural characteristics added thereto a knowledge of the Chinese language (such as they could hardly fail to pick up) and a full understanding of Chinese methods of business. At present this dream is unrealisable in part. One of two characteristics must be absent: the education must go or the character must suffer, though probably the requisite education is not attainable by any exist- ing means.
The character must suffer. I have the greatest respect for the many good qualities of the Chinese, and I feel that I can say without offence, that I should strongly object to send children of my own to attend a mixed school. The Right Reverend the Bishop of Victoria, who was for 20 years (I believe) Head of a Chinese Missionary College in Ning Po, and should know, if anyone does, is a signatory of the Petition, para. 2 of which expresses my meaning very clearly.
So universally is this opinion held that the second alternative is in practice. hardly an alternative at all. The children are brought up, or allowed to grow up, ignorant. Their sons will be more ignorant still. When we might have had a strong full-blooded British community born to the soil, to carry on our commerce against American, German, and French competition in the Far East, we are lay- ing up for ourselves an unlearned, unskilfal, unpatriotic generation of "mean whites" to be the standing disgrace of the Colony.
C-Assuming the school to be unobjectionable and necessary, it remains to consider what its nature should be. The Petition asks for both Primary and Secondary Education. The necessity for the latter must be conceded if my view of the matter is a correct one, and it should be carefully arranged to suit the prac- tical requirements of the Colony.
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