7.
37
13
et.
Mr. Sloss: said that his firstreaction when he got to Hong Kong was of disappointment that the original aim of the University had almost completely disappeared and nothing effective had been achieved. In the beginning, the Chinese Provincial Governments had provided scholarships for Chinese from the interior of China to come to Hong Kong for periods of three to six years. These scholarships were maintained for some years and worked effectively. Those who came returned to China and a surprising number of them have since achieved positions of some note and authority in
China. But the University started to work in 1912 when the revolution in South China was just getting under way, and the depth and intensity of nationalist feeling was under- estimated. From 1912 antagonism spread among Chinese in respect of Great Britain and things British including the University of Hong Kong. The original scheme of scholarships for Chinese from China gradually disappeared and by about 1918 had ceased to exist. At the same time, however, the number of Chinese students from the Straits, the Dutch Indies, Australia, and occasionally from North America increased, and more and more the University of Hong Kong tended to become a university for Overseas Chinese. The original purpose had drifted to that. From time to
time attempts were made to present a more attractive front towards China. There was a considerable development of Chinese studies, the establishment of a very excellent Chinese library, and later the appointment of an outstanding Chinese scholar as Professor of Chinese, so that from about 1930 onwards, there was the rather curious phenomenon of Hong Kong tending to be one of the centres of Chinese classical studies. All the time, too, the Medical School had been developing, and this did definitely achieve a high reputation in the Far East. But other faculties were starved. It was very late in the day before anything was done towards an adequate provision for the training of teachers; until the last years the faculty of science never provided anything more than facilities for preliminary studies in medicine and engineering. The view was developed too as suggested in Sir Andrew Caldecott's letter, that it was no essential part of the function of the Hong Kong Government to provide cheap medical education to the Chinese of Malaya. The responsibility there lay with the Straits Government. There grew the feeling that
that as an institution possibly a mistake had been made; intended to serve the needs of Hong Kong the University was pretentious and over-ambitious, and that the essential needs of the Colony could adequately be served by a small medical school, a school of engineering and a training school for teachers. Mr. Sloss concluded that the initial object of the University had ceased to be effective.
/22.