38
COPY.
The Old Glebe,
Eggesford, Devon.
The Rt. Hon. Mr. A.CReech Jones, M.F.
etc.,
etc.,
November 18th. 1949.
H.A.secretary of State for the Colonies.
Dear Sir,
Having had the honour of serving on your last Hong Kong University Committee, I feel emboldened to bring respectfully to your attention some ideas which have occurred to me in connexion with Hong Kong, its University and the defence of the English language in the Far last, This is a prolem on which your own thoughts and those of officials in H.M.Colonial Office must often have been anxiously concentrated and if the line of approach I now venture to submit is already in your minds or has already been acted on I hope you will forgive the intrusion of suggestions engenereu in the seclusion of retire- ment in rural Devonshire.
In Committee i insisted on the enormous value to us of possessing a University situated in territory contiguous to China in that it had a unique advantage over the Universities of that country as a disseminator of nigh British standards of teaching and of thought and ways under British jurisdiction and protection. It was moreover a railadium of the snglish language and a criterion of standards for Chinese students of the purity of our speech, through which the practical benefits and range of our mercantile and cultural contacts through its debased forms, including that lingua franca of the China ports pidgin anglish, should be extended and improved throughout the Far Cast. It might indeed in suverse circumstances even become the only University in touch with China where undiluted inglish thought and lan uage could be maintained and taught during a temporary eclipse of our political prestige on the mainland. It had enormous propaganda potential and for this and many other weighty reasons I was
/stroni