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war, the difficulties of starting them up again quickly (destroyed buildings, etc.) and the relatively small proportion of the existing students who wouldn't have completed their studies in China in the meantime.
We decided then not to stir up hopes and over-optimistic estimates by telegraphing for further information now, but as Hong Kong has now taken the initiative the objection to raising this with them seems to have weakened. Any enquiry should put emphasis no doubt on the need for suitable entry qualifications. In the long run I suppose they are better able to estimate the situation on this side than we are here.
(c) Equipment. This may put an October opening out of the question. The position will have been discussed
under Item 4. Anyway we all agree that the sooner the long processes of ordering and obtaining and transporting are set in motion the better.
(d) Buildings. I think Sloss feels that the Admiral can be encouraged to get ahead in repairing and renovating these so that they are fit for use, without prejudice to the future, as he feels that they could be used as secondary schools etc. if the University has to be rebuilt elsewhere. I understand there is a general view, shared by Sloss, that the present site and buildings are definitely unsuitable for the Lugard type of university that we wish to see. We much be sure therefore that spending money now on re-establishing the damaged buildings will not in fact prejudice the decision on the long range issue,
(e) Recruitment of adequately qualified staff. This is a main crux. Apparently a good many will be required unless some of the time expired ones whom I think Sloss has been pensioning off are persuaded to go out again for the emergency. I should have personally thought that might be the happiest solution to the immediate question as the old ones would be on a purely temporary basis, and we avoid mortgaging the future. There are two dangers in recruiting new staff at this particular juncture: (i) if they are recruiting to Hong Kong University on pensionable terms, the long range issue on which we have been asked to advise is at once prejudged, since one view is that the alternative to the Lugard-typé university should be no university at all but just a médical school and a training college etc. to meet purely local needs, and this last alternative would be compromised by such appointments; or (ii) if they are given short-term contract appointments to the university, or recruited to any employers other than the university, the attractiveness of the job will not be adequate to win staff of the quality required for manning the Lugard University if that is presently set up and these men are inherited by it (it looks therefore as though any appointments now would have to be short-term contract appointments only).
(f) Finally if the university as such is to start again in October, and if the decision of the powers that be proves to be against a Lugard university, then the Committee's recommendations may prove to have been stultified by the short range action now taken. Committee might recommend against re-establishing the University unless it were a first-class show of the Lugard type, and it might be almost impossible
For the
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