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CBLIC RE ORD OFFICE

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been compelled to find new resources for new schemes, and as each year the position of trade became more and more unfavourable. would have hesitated to ask for these new resources until times were less difficult. The harbour works, for example were the result of the shipping conditions of 1921, but were constructel after those special conditions had ceased to exist, because the Development Fund preserved and was deliberately intended to preserve the financial point of view of 1921.

We recommend that the Development Fund should be closed and that the balance of the fund should be used either to meet immediate requirements of current expenditure or to redeem debt. The interest on advances made from the fund should be included in the ordinary revenue under Head VII, and all expenditure which is now charged against the fund must, in so far as it is recurring. be charged against general revenues.

3. Another relic of the past, of the same nature as the Develop- ment Fund, and attended by the same dangers, is the Government Scholarship Fund now valued at Rs.505,000. The prosperous years 1921-23 both created the necessity for a scheme of scholarships and provided the Colony with resources with which to carry it out. While the general idea of Mr. Denham's note of the 31st August, 1921, which initiated the scheme, was that." the unexampled prosperity of the Colony should be utilized for the benefit of tions to come, " he was able also to put forward the very practical genera- argument that this prosperity was leading to considerable measures of reorganization, particularly in the Medical and Health Depart- ment, and that Government was being faced with a real difficulty in obtaining candidates to fill new posts, the more so, because at that period Government service could not by comparison offer great attraction.

Sir Hesketh Bell recognised the merits of the scheme but ex- pressed the view that the preference as regards facilities of special study in Europe should be given to men who were already in the Civil Service. His Excellency believed that in the Medical, Agri- cultural, Forest, Public Works and Railway Departments, which were the departments principally concerned, there were young men who had already shown general capacity and keenness and who would, if sent abroad for a course of special study, acquire the amount of knowledge which would fit them for the higher posts in the local Government service. He held that it would be wiser to spend money on men who had already proved their general capacity as civil servants rather than to take young lads fresh from school whose general fitness for future usefulness would, to a large extent, be a matter of chance.

The scheme which was approved by a Committee and which in May, 1922, was forwarded for submission to the Secretary of State when Mr. Denham was acting as Governor was not, however.

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limited to members of the Service, nor did the Secretary of State make this restriction, although conditions which he laid down pointed in that direction, namely, that the holder of the scholarship should undertake to serve in a Government department, that the nature of the scholarship to be offered in any one year and the particular posts which it was contemplated that the holder would be qualified to fill should be laid down in advance by the Governor in Executive Council, and that the candidate should be chosen by

small selection committee.

The regulations for the award of grants show that they may be given (a) to officers who are already in or who are about to enter a Government department, (b) to medical or other professional men

in aid of approved studies that may be beneficial to the Colony, (c) to students for a similar purpose, (d) for approved research work which, in the case of Government officers, may be in substitution for study leave.

Since the fund was started more than Rs.200,000 has been spent. The list of the scholarships granted shows that on the whole the fund has been used to advantage. It has been, like every other fund, raided for purposes outside its immediate scope, an officer of the Agricultural Department, for instance, having been sent to Hawaii to study irrigation on a mission which was less in his own personal interest than to assist Government in its irrigation scheme. Nevertheless there are dangers in the system which has been adopted, the more so as the Secretary of State's. stipulation that the nature of the scholarships should be determined beforehand has never been observed. The fund was the outcome of a period of prosperity and expansion and its maintenance is now less justifi- able, when not only is there a keen desire to enter Government service, but the number of Government posts is being reduced. The requirement of specialized knowledge or experience for filling a particular appointment seldom arises, and the existence of the fund is an invitation to spend money either on training which has no immediate reference to the necessities of administration, or on the premature selection of candidates to be educated to fill (iovernment posts although such candidates at the time of their selection have no experience or special qualifications which dis- tinguish them from any other young man of promise.

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We consider that to spend money on students who are about to enter Government departments" is a luxury which the Colony can no longer afford. Had the scheme been framed at the outset on the lines which Sir Hesketh Bell appears to have contemplated, and been limited to officials who had already shown promise and whose training in special lines was a declared necessity of the Government, we should see no objection to it, but the grant of a scholarship in such restricted conditions would so rarely have

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