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the Universities of the British Empire. I was available throughout the summer, or rather until the end of August when I got ill, but there was apparently no service which I could usefully perform for the Board during that period.
5.
I am almost entirely lacking in such knowledge as
would enable me to contribute anything useful to those
discussions which now take up the greater part of the time of the Board's meetings, even were I able to follow such discussions which unfortunately I am not. I refer to
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discussions on such questions as to whether the Indemnity's capital funds should be invested in the construction and equipment of, say, an electrical factory to be worked by the Ministry of Industries, or in the purchase of spindles and other machinery for certain Chinese Cotton Mills in Shanghai. If the Trustees are responsible for the investments in which the Indemnity funds are to be placed (as presumably they are,
though even this is not clear to me, for the Political Council appears to decide without reference to the Trustees, not only how the whole indemnity including such funds as are in the terms of the China Indemnity (Application) Act of 1931 to be paid to the Board direct should be apportioned as between railways and other state activities, but also what particular schemes should receive the benefit of the Indemnity Funds) then surely those who are qualified to judge the probable productivity
of an industrial or other scheme should be included among the
Trustees, or experts should be employed? And this would seem to be the more necessary because though some suggestions have been made that the Chinese Government will guarantee
interest, no assurance of this has, so far as I am aware, be en given to the Trustees. Frankly I do not know where, as a
Trustee,