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2. EFFECT OF OUTBREAK OF PACIFIC WAR.
The University suffered its share of damage during the active phase of the war in Hong Kong. The newly erected Northcote Science Block was heavily damaged by shell fire and most of the apparatus was destroyed, the remainder being looted by uncontrolled mobs after the fighting ceased. The Japanese seized all books, instruments, scientific equipment, etc. belonging to the University and transported most of it to Japan. An attempt was made to save the platinum vessels of the Physics Department and various other articles of value, including the Chancellor's and Vice-Chancellor's robes, by depositing them in places of relative safety. The official seal of the University was salvaged from the Colony and is at present in the safe of the British Embassy in Chungking. Final examinations were in progress at the time of the outbreak of war, and at an emergency meeting of the Senate held after the hostilities were over it was decided to confer War-time Degrees on students of the various faculties who would reasonably have been expected to graduate by May 1942. Other students were given certificates stating what studies they had completed, in the hope that they might make their way to Universities in Free China and there continue their studies. Of the 570 students enrolled in the University no fewer than 346 eventually migrated to Free China, of whom 243 are at the present date continuing their studies in 17 different Chinese Universities and Colleges. Under a special arrangement which had the approval and authority of H.E. the British Ambassador to China, many of these students, who are cut off from all sources of support, have been receiving temporary financial assistance in the form of loans for travel, clothing and other necessary expenses.
3. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS AFFECTING THE RECONSTITUTION OF THE
UNIVERSITY AS A WHOLE.
In the view of the vice-Chancellor, Mr. D.J. Sloss, who is still under apanese confinement in Stanley Camp, Hong Kong, it is necessary to decide whether the future scope of the University is to be mainly a local one, and limited chiefly to the training of subordinate officers for the Hong Kong Civil Service, or whether it is to count as an expression of British policy towards China and the Far East. In the past the University has existed without subsidy from the Imperial Government and has been too poor adequately to fill the wider function, yet too large and cumbersome economi- cally to fulfil a purely local purpose. It is essential to consider and decide for which of these two functions the future University is to be planned.