REGISTERED No.
DRAFT AND RECORD COPY
60
LETTER
SENT
Colonial UTICATE
Downing Street 8.W.1. 18th March, 1943.
DRAF
MR. Monson 183.43.
MR..........
MR..
ENCLOSURES
Dear scott,
You know from my letter of the 15th March that Morse has agreed to release from the funds of the Hong Kong University held by the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank the sum of £2,000 to help Lingnan and Chungahan Universities to build dormitories for Hong Kong University students. You will be interested to know that at a discussion on the 16th March with Gent, Morse said that he would be willing to provide further funds. He explained that he had quite a considerable amount of University money in his charge, and was ready to disburse more of it, as he assumed that, provided he and the Colonial Office were in agreement, there could be no possibility of his action being challenged by University authorities in future years. (You can take it that this is a fairly safe assumption).
According to the figures Morse gave Gent, .the balances to Hơng Kong University credit amount to £16,800 approximately, and the income is as follows:-
To
FURTHER ACTION
£42,100 India 3% 1948
£1,263
£145,000 Funding 4% 1960/90
£5,800
£197,500 3 Savings 1955/65
£5,925
£34,000 Japan 6% 1942
£12,988.
In addition, the Staff Provident Fund has an investment of about £76,000 in war loan, although there would be objections to making this available for general University purposes. He suggested that you should enquire whether the grant for which the Ambassador asked could usefully be increased, if a Tather larger grant could be made from available balances here, or alternatively whether you" would yea"would help if the Chinese Universities concerned were told that a supplementary grant would be made available later if they should require it.
A.L. 800T, 430.
Morse
(0004) Wt. 25408-113 40,000 ea. 2 serta 9/40 T.S. 695