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(b) As regards the Far Eastern University issue, I am a good deal more doubtful. As I have stated in para. 3 above, I don't see how a decision can be given on this issue without (i) an enlargement of the proposed Advisory Committee to include Malaya representatives; (ii) reference to the Inter-University Council; (iii) a visit by a competent body to the areas involved in the Far East and the convassing of local opinion on the spot. (iii) was certainly envisaged by the Committee that considered this question in the Office while I was absent on tour in 1943. I certainly feel that we could not bypass the Inter-University Council on such a major Colonial University policy issue in one of the main regions of the Empire. The proposed Advisory Committee can, however, give its views on this project as a Committee for what they are worth, and it might well be that this would be such as to justify the Secretary of State in deciding not to pursue the project further. It would be for him to decide whether to bring in the Council at that stage and it might not be necessary if our recommendation was both negative and convincing.
(0)
As regards the future of Hong Kong University, if the answers to (a) and (b) are negative, again I feel that this is a matter for the Inter-University Council and that reference to them would be necessary; but that this Committee could do useful work in preparing the ground and giving a lead. A letter which I have had from Mr. Sloss since our meeting (attached at 49) shows that immediately before the war he was thinking in terms of developing two independent Universities of Malaya and Hong Kong, with a certain pooling of more specialised resources. That is pre-eminently an issue that ought to be decided without reference to the Inter-University Council, and incidentally it seems to suggest that Mr. Sloss' present alternatives of either a British University for China at Hong Kong or else no University at Hong Kong at all are posed too dramatically.
5. Assuming that the proposed Advisory Committee is to have its terms of reference and membership widened, as agreed upon at our meeting, I am not altogether happy about Dr. Channon's position. After discussion ending with Sir George Gater's minute of 5.5.45, Dr. Channon was asked to join the Advisory Committee when it was concerned solely with practical mar details of rehabilitation and at a time when Dr. Channon himself was ill. Now it is proposed to widen the Committee's terms of reference to include important questions of policy, and Dr. Channon has been fit again for some time past. It is quite true that his presence on this particular Committee would not make the Chairman's task any easier (see in this connection X in my minute of 26.4.45), but we shall want his views on at any rate the Far Eastern issue (see para. 15 of 47) and he might well be surprised and hurt if he found that this Committee were dealing with major questions of policy without his having been brought in on it at all. This would not be the case if he had been told beforehand what was proposed, and certainly not if he had been given a chance of joining the Committee itself again if he has the time. It is quite on the cards that he would not have the time as he has a whole-time job. Incidentally the greater the number of busy people on the Committee the harder it will be to make a quick report. Probably the best thing would be for me to tell him what is proposed either by telephone or when I next see him, and find out whether he would have the time to join the Committee, and if he has and would clearly like to do so, we should ask him. If he has
not