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required before they were able to render advice on that. Possibly the Committee would want to render an interim report quite quickly on the immediate situation, if it was thought that they might take some time to advise on the long-term issue. He would like to know how that suggested plan of work commended itself to the Committee.
9.
Professor Penson referring to the long-range issue said she thought she might be more ignorant than most if not all of those present as to the position of Hong Kong University before the war.
She did not know what interpretation there had been in the past of the aims for which the University was established, and if there was any further information she thought it would be extremely useful to have it. It seemed to her too that the Committee might want to be clear as to how the original policy should now be interpreted. For example the present day interpretation of the conception of the University as a vehicle for the establishment of good relations might be rather a different thing from the interpretation of the later 19th century. There might now be a good deal more stress on the value of a university infused with the oriental attitude to education and learning rather than a university primarily modelled on Western ideas.
10. The Chairman said in reply to the first part of Professor Penson's question that No.HKUAC No. 14 was a note by Mr. Sloss giving a brief history of the growth of the University and a summary of its position as it was before the war. He thought it would be a matter of no difficulty to add to that statement on the factual side as much more detail, within limits as members thought useful, for example the structure of the faculties, position of teaching staff, problems of students, etc.
11.
Dr. Priestley enquired whether it would be possible for members to have a copy of the full Report of the 1939 Committee.
12.
The Chairman suggested that perhaps it would meet the wishes ot the Committee if the one or two copies available were circulated, to members. With regard to the sense in which the University had interpreted the original cultural aim and to what extent it had succeeded in this, he would ask Mr. Sloss to speak.
13.
Mr. Sloss: said that his first reaction when he got to Hong Kong was one of disappointment that the original ain 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 wore 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 Indics, 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.
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