Colonial Office,
The Church House,
Great Smith Street,
London, S.W.1.
19th October, 1948.
77
기
34247/48
Expectations
him dran fimultam,
Thank you for your personal letter of the 23rd September about the University, enclosing a copy of Sloss's letter of the 22nd September to MacDougall.
You will by now have received our telegram No. 1049. I am afraid, from what Sloss says, this is bound to cause serious disappointment. But it seems quite clear from Sloss's letter that the reason for the difficulty about making Colonial Development and Welfare moneys available for Hong Kong University has not been appreciated. Our recent telegram endeavours to explain the reason again. To talk about being "the victims of adverse discrimination" is, of course, quite beside the point. It is true, as stated in our telegram, that the Colonial Development and Welfare higher education alloca- tion is already very fully committed, but the first difficulty which has to be overcome is not that, but the difficulty of making out a case within the ambit of the Colonial Development and Welfare Vote.
We can appreciate the feeling in Hong Kong, referred to in paragraph 8 of your savingram No. 444, that a Colony which has been much to the fore in the development of higher education should not now, because of its initiative, be placed at a disadvantage in comparison with other Colonies which have hitherto done less for themselves (a point which Sloss in his letter to MacDougall makes in another way that selfhelp perhaps establishes some sort of case for outside help). This is a very natural feeling, but the hard fact of the limited scope of the Colonial Development and Welfare Act remains.
SIR ALEXANDER GRANTHAM, K.C.M.G.
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