26

2.

admiration for the persistence and the zeal, under appalling conditions, of a number of lady teachers from the Government and aided schools. Miss Gibbins, the Head of the Senior school and Miss Anderson, who took charge of the school for junior pupils, were admirable.

When the internees came out of the camp they had found the University completely ruined. All the buildings were destroyed; equipment had disappeared; and all that remained was the Library, which was practically intact. Before entering the Camp he had managed to place two very good Chinese in the Library, with the injunction that they were to hold on by all means and to take employment under the Japanese to look after the Library. Practically the only books that were lost were on the South Seas and the Pacific.

The number of volumes remaining was many thousands in excess of what they had left behind and there were also official records of all kinds. The Training College Library, private libraries and many Government records had been collected for safe keeping by

Mr. Chan Kwan-po and his helpers. Unfortunately looting was encouraged by the Japanese. The looting at the University was mainly by the poor Chinese for the firewood provided by the ceilings, floors, docrs and equipment.

At present there were no very suribus obligations to the students. There were a few who had to spend a final year to complete their medical course.

Professor Gordon King was now in charge of the hospitals in Hong Kong. The Navy had taken over a large part of the teaching hospital and they were willing for their physicians and surgeons to co-opurete in the final year classes that would be conducted in 1945. For the major part of the students provision had been made in China and most of them had taken full advantage of these provisions; he was afraid that those who did not were now bound to suffer. The only students about whom he had some concern were those who had been in the Volunteers, were male prisoners of war and hal only now been released. Most of them were English, Anglo-, Chinese and Russians, and they ha no chance of completing their courses.

They were now anxi us to do so as quickly as possible. He ha discussed their problem in Ceylon and he thought facilities would be given there, but there were reasons, chiefly linguistic and racial, which made it difficult, and they were anxious to come to England.

No one could tell him yet whether these men, combatants or members of the Medical Units during the fighting, who had had three- and-a-half years as prisoners of war, were eligible for the financial and other help that the British Government was giving to men released from the Forces in England. He personally would feel it a great hardship if they were not treated as generously as the others who had been fighting in Europe.

That was an issue with which one still had to deal. he future was difficult to forecast. He had been sent

home

Share This Page