Rich is only
mount was
which
hopect for
from the Rockefeller Foundation; but a large part of
the endowments has come from Chinese not only in the
Colony, but also in China, Malaya and elsewhere.
94
The task is too great to be achieved by
the community of Hong Kong by the help of their own
unaided resources. The University has been described
"a great British lighthouse built upon the most
prominent rock upon the China coast in the darkest age
of Asia". The lighthouse must be supported not only
by the inhabitants of that rock; but also by the wider community of the British Empire, whose interests in
those seas are so great.
In
The contribution from the China Indemnity
Fund will come at a time when it is sorely needed.
every direction the activities of the University are cramped and its efficiency impaired by its lack of funds. Reporting in April, 1929, the Vice-Chancellor wrote: "Its staff is seriously underpaid; its accommodation is inadequate, its library poor and its equipment, especially
in the Faculty of Arts, indifferent". It was at one time hoped that the grant from the Indemnity Fund might be employed in establishing a new Faculty of Chinee, to be added to the three existing Faculties of Arts, Medicine and Engineering. It now appears that the grant may be insufficient to do more than meet urgent
It will, requirements in the existing Faculties. however, bring nearer the time when a Chinese Faculty can be established and when the University will thus be enabled to take up its second role and act not only as interpreter of West to East but also as interpreter of the East, with all its treasures of art and literature
and ancient wisdom.
من
In