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need of the Colony for teachers, civil engineers and doctors
is sufficient reason for this attempt to maintain the continuity
of training for the professions in Hong Kong. To achieve this
end, an Interim Committee was established to organize and conduct
essential teaching, and a temporary Provisional Powers Committee
was established by Order-in-Council to carry out certain essential
functions of the University. The Interim Committee, with full
approval of the Provisional Powers Committee, determined that,
faced by shortage of staff and destruction of the greater part
of the University buildings, laboratories and equipment, it could
only reconstruct an institution of University status by building
up, as it were from the bottom, and therefore admitted in 1946
(and in 1947 thudents to fist-year and thermo-year classes.) students to first year classes So, year by year, the student body of the University will be re-established. Buildings have been
restored as they were required and equipment ordered (mainly in the United Kingdom) has come to hard, but very much more slowly than was hoped, and at greater cost.
The success of these extemporized measures has been such that it is now believed that the time has come formally to restore the University by the re-establishment of its governing authorities. This has been made practicable by a generous decision of the Government of Hong Kong to undertake the greater part of the financial burden of restoring the whole of the University buildings,
and equipment. The University is, therefore, in a position to
assume that by the year 1952, by successive suages, it will be able
to do all the work that it was equipped to perform in the year 1940.
X
The Court and Council of the University, having been
X reconstituted, measures can now be taken to fill vacancies in the
staff of the University caused by deaths and retirements. Immediate
steps will be taken for the selection of men for the Vice-
Chancellorship, for Professorships in Medicine, Surgery, Pathology, Chemistry, Mathematics and for Readerships and Lectureships in some
of these subjects. Recruitment of suitable men at this time will
be difficult but it is confidently expected that the kind of work
that can be offered to men will attract them to the Colony,