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Dear Gilbert,
leta April, 1947.
Ans'd (28).
We have been considering the future or the Hong Kong University, and I want to ask for the Treasury's very sympathetic consideration of the following proposals for assistance from the United Kingdom. They are founded on the inportance of the University to wider British interests as well as to the Colony itself, and are supported by the Foreign Office as well as the Colonial Office.
The detailed facts are given in the enclosed copies of the report of a Committee which was set up in 1945 to advise on the future of the University and of a memorandum subsequently prepared by us and agreed with the Foreign Office. The main recommenda- tion of the Committee was that the University should be re-established as soon as possible on a firm Financial basis with staff and facilities adequate to make it fully capable of reaching British academic standards and becoming an effective centre for Sino-British contact In the sphere of learning, and the memorandum goes into greater detail about the means of financing that undertaking.
Our whole joint approach to this subject with the Foreign Office is on the basis that the maintenance of a British University in Hong Kong is valuable both to the Colony itself and to the whole British position in the Far past.
Sir Bernard Gilbert, K.C.B., K.B.E.
That the
maintenance