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provinces would look as Englishmen look to Oxford
and Cambridge
C
for authoritative guidance in the
study of their language, their literature, their history, their archaeology, their folklore, their
religious beliefs, and the whole fabric of their
civilization. If the Chinese thus came to think of
Hong Kong with affection as a place in which all that
is dear to them is treasured, in which all that is
hallowed for them by past tradition is carefully studied, and in which all that may help them in their renaissance is made accessible and intelligible, and is adapted to their needs, then we may, I believe,
look into the future with serene assurance; for this
Colony would not in that event stand aloof from the
trend of Chinese thought and aspirations; it would not
be merely a commercial outpost from which Great Britain
watches over the trade of her subjects in China; but
it would be in the forefront of the movement which,
sooner or later, will bring to the distraught and
harassed peoples of China an end to revolution, an
end to chaos and anarchy, a dawn of better things,
of law and order and settled government, and which
finally will carry that ancient land to a stage of
development higher and nobler than it has hitherto
attained, because Chinese ideals ethical, social
and intellectual will have passed through the
alembic of the moral, political and scientific
teaching of the West, and come forth, not Europeanized
or Americanized, but embellished and enriched by assimilation of all that the East can profitably learn
from the West.
4.
I am encouraged by Your Lordship's
confidential