Eitel on the one hand clearly wants rather to emphasize the elementary side. It is a place where Chinese can learn English thoroughly; and yet he does not always write consistently about it. In one passage, he declaims against the unwisdom of trying to secure the results of a secondary or high school instead of making "showy results" first of all a priority. In another passage, he says this institution should be a successful elementary school, but before it can become "what it ought to be, viz. the model Secondary School to light the colony," reform is required.
Thus, Eitel is in this latter vein here; and Lord Ripon (in a despatch chiefly dated 20 January, received 16 January, No. 24656) seems to have looked on the matter lastly. Lord Ripon stated Hautsford's opinion that it ought to be the model Secondary school of the colony. Mr. Cockburn considers its elementary work to be much the most important and says there is no demand for higher education in Hong Kong. Sir J. O'Malley, who knows Hong Kong well, considers it to be most important to encourage higher education in the Colony.
Sir Cecil Smith seems to incline to the view simply that the business of government is to pay for elementary education, and that higher education is a luxury - a view which is consistently held here, but which does not preclude one model secondary school supported by the government.
The Government's despatch supports Eitel, but it does not elucidate his views in the slightest or give any clue as to carrying them out, except by suggesting that Mr. Wright should be more subordinated to Dr. Eitel.
What Lord Ripon is really asked to decide is: Shall the Victoria College become more and more a place of higher education or more and more a place of elementary education? It seems to me (a) that we must keep the elementary side; because if we do not, the building will be deserted; and (b) that the government must do something to encourage higher education. But if that is so, either the same institution must be used for both, which seems to have created the present difficulty; or the present institution must be confined to elementary work, and the Government must either subsidise a new institution or...
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