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strongly in favour of taking the financial risks involved in the proposals of the Committee.
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Since then it was decided, for prudent reasons, to mark time and to restore the University only to its pre-war standard. And now though the prognostications of two years ago regarding China have been fulfilled, the uncertainty regarding Hong Kong itself has been dissipated. Nevertheless, the financial strain involved in maintaining the status of the University of Hong Kong has markedly increased and is likely to weigh more heavily than ever in the financial balance of the British Commonwealth of Nations. How could the burden be eased? I see only one practical way for effective large scale act on and that is to extend on a basis of self-interest and mutual help the ranks of patrons and financial supporters.
I have observed in the Press recent reports that the Communist regime is not only refusing to accept official correspondence in English but is prohibiting the teaching of English in its schools and Universities and taking active steps to supplant English by Russian. This is a development to be expected in Russian satellite regions, but is none the less alarming to our prospects.
One immediate corollary would appear to be that the financial and cultural support hitherto so generously accorded to the principal Universities of China by the Western World will speedily dry up and that non-Russian foreign professors and staffs will be driven out. The pro-Chinese sympathies of the teachers and missionaries involved will however persist and they will seek the best way open to them to remain in touch with their Chinese sympathizers and with the enormous capital investments and important missions committed to their trust. They will have to make up their minds quickly, Americans, British, French, Italians, Scandinavians and Fortuguese, Frotestants and Roman-Catholics, if they are not to suffer dispersal and see their work destroyed beyond even a hope of recovery. As their Nations are not likely to reinstate them by force or guile for some years to come, I suggest that it is most likely that their common self-interest will lead them to establish their forward bases for contact with China
in its safest proximity. Their choices would probably vary and
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