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harbour after the advent of the tunnel? I believe that the only satisfactory long-term solution to the running of the public bus services is for them to be nationalized.
I suggest that these and other similar problems exist because of an inadequate approach to social welfare as a whole. It has been argued that until recently our population was transitory, and we did not need to provide a complete social infrastructure for them. But the events of the last 21 years at least have shown that they are here to stay. A period of almost a generation is long enough for us to have time to build up the social services that we need today. I believe that our "laissez faire" approach which has worked so well in economic affairs, has been allowed to pervade our thinking for too long in social matters. We now have a breathing space to progress in this field. We are rich enough to do so. We should act in this way not on humanitarian grounds alone, but also as an insurance against what the future may hold in store for us. Unless we move faster than we are doing at present, I am afraid that when the next test comes, the fabric of our society may not prove to be sufficiently strong.
When I learnt that the Director of Social Welfare had recently been elevated from the Legislative to the Executive Council, I must admit to wondering whether this step was not modelled on the British practice of relegation to the House of Lords, so that he might never be heard from again. I believe that Social Welfare is a subject that would benefit from the cross-section of opinion and the exposure to public interest that would be derived from bringing it within the scope of this Council, and I believe that this should be done.
A Museum
I should now like to turn to a lighter subject, namely the cultural activities of the British as a colonizing people. They have been criticized for trooping around the world, carrying their culture with them in a kit-bag, and leaving the indigenous communities very much to their own devices as regards their cultural activities. In this respect, although perhaps not in others, they compare unfavourably with the French, who have left behind them a series of admirable museums in virtually all the countries they visited as a colonial power.
(Mr. Henry H. L. HU arrived at this point).
In Hong Kong we did indeed have a museum of a sort a hundred years ago in the then City Hall, which deteriorated to such an extent that it was described in 1933 as representing "the low water mark in museum provision throughout the whole of the British Empire, excepting only the smaller islands of the Pacific and some of the more backward African territories". It was moreover added that "this statement, sweeping as it is, is not sufficient to give a general idea of the museum backwardness of this Colony". These words could almost be spoken today.
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A further measure of the poverty of our own facilities is the fact that in Britain there exists already one museum for every 56,000 people, and in the United States of America one for every 25,000.
This might not matter very much if it were merely a question of taste and interest. But I believe that a museum has a part to play in contributing to the interest in life of our community, and in answering, in one small way, the question that is increasingly asked by our young people of "who they are", and "where they came from", and "why they are here", and in this way contributing to their contentedness with their lot here. It is significant in this respect that during the exhibition held recently of Hong Kong in 1870, as many as 150,000 people visited this exhibition alone.
At the recent Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool, the Minister for the Arts, Lord Eccles, pointed out that governments must now go beyond the satisfaction of material needs, and show an increasing concern for the imagination and spirit of all members of the community. He said, and in view of the importance of his speech, I quote from it at some length:
"What else should we do for the arts which we are not doing now? I start with museums and galleries. Large and small, everywhere, museums are growing in popularity. This is not a temporary boom. Year by year better education and more frequent travel will push up attendances. Such assured prosperity is to be welcomed in times of change because museums introduce their visitors to the stabilizing knowledge that the present grows out of the past, and that in the past men created masterpieces, and will again, which restore and raise our confidence in human nature. The need above all others is for more space and staff in order adequately to catalogue, preserve, display, publicize and reproduce what the museums already have in their collections. Large building programmes are essential for the national museums. They ought to be undertaken without delay and, if they are, no less should be done for the provincial museums."
It should be borne in mind that this statement was made by the representative of a government that has shown itself as much concerned to limit public expenditure, and make those services pay for themselves which can reasonably be expected to do so, as, in its different circumstances, is our own government here.
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was removed as it is not part of the original text and was an error on my part. The corrected response is provided above.