36
I should be grateful if you would let me have this back with your comments through Mr. Harding reference qua.
C.D. and w.
52
P.S.
)B
15.7.1948.
I also attach at No. 52 a letter from the Foreign Office about the proposed publication of the Report, on which I should be glad to have your comments please.
53
X
There is a copy of (12) ~5.03/2148
Mr. Sidebotham (through Mr. Bourdillon)
1. With regard to publication, my view about its impracticability expressed on 18.2.48 has been changed by the attitude of the Hong Kong Government and the Foreign Office that the numerous references to British prestige and to the Imperial purposes of the University as envisaged by the 1946 Committee need not be deleted. I think the local people are the best judges of the effects of publication on our reputation out there, and if Government still wants it in the light of the uncertainty as to whether there will ever be any more help for the University than the present Treasury 4 million, I think we should accept their view and get ahead with preparing the draft letters to the signatories. But would it might to wall ask Government again to make sure. In doing so, it is the difficulty and uncertainty about a further grant that, in my view, should be emphasised rather than its impossibility do not regard further Imperial help later on as impossible, either from C.D.W. funds (to a limited extent see below), or directly from H.M.G. for the wider goal set out in the Report; consideration of this is only deferred and though it is clearly most unlikely for the moment, the Chancellor's wish that the million should go on development towards the wider goal might well be read as an indication that H.M.G. would like to implement the Report if it could.
su
,
The
Z.As regards the possibility of a C.D.W. grant, I attach an extract from the Colonial University Grants Advisory Committee (CUGAC), where Aand B should be noted, which not seem to be on the file. important thing is that neither a formal application from Hong Kong nor a full statement of the whole Hong Kong case as it stands since the 1946 Committee's Report has yet been before CUGAC or for that matter before the Inter-University Council Executive Committee either. Hong Kong's chances have suffered partly from the confusion of its narrower colonial needs in this field with the wider Imperial purposes to which the 1946 Committee draw attention, which has given the Inter University Council a perfectly reasonable case hitherto for saying help must be direct from H.M.G. and not from the limited C.D.W. allocation which is desperately required for purely colonial needs elsewhere. But Hong Kong's chances
/have...