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or to supervise the instruction therein. There is a real danger in
this. In the later days of the Manchu Government official interest
in education had begun to show itself in two ways namely (a) in
licensing individual teachers to teach in schools of different
grades and (b) in publishing national readers. These latter were excellent and were adopted in Hongkong schools.
face of it
Then came the Revolution which, though on the
anti-Manchu, was at heart anti-foreign. The new
movement has brought with it an anti-foreign propaganda through
teachers both licensed and unlicensed as I am informed, and has
evolved a new national reader military in spirit and unsuited for Hongkong schools. As evidence of the anti-foreign propaganda, I may mention that last year a Chinese pamphlet fell into the hands of
the Director of Education. It was not official but it laid down a
calendar for the schools of the Republic. The calendar prescribed five days of national rejoicing (namely anniversaries of events in the Revolution) and five days to be observed as days of national disgrace, two of which were the anniversaries of the seizure of Kiauchou by Germany and of the cession of Hongkong to Great Britain. In this connection I enclose copy of a letter I addressed recently to the Consul-General at Canton regarding an anti-foreign pamphlet found in the possession of itinerant Chinese lecturers, who were arrested by the Police here and were deported.
6.
There is also no power to prevent any person opening in the Colony any private school, no matter how undesir- -able in character. This want was felt last September when an agent and personal friend of the Minister of Education in Canton, came down to this Colony, in order to arrange for the opening of a school with the ostensible object of training Chinese lady teachers under the control of a Chinese "suffragette" of the most pronounced revolutionary opinions. I did my best to stop the open- -ing of this school, but as those concerned found that I had no legal power to do so, I failed in my object. I am informed that this establishment is a school in name only: it is in reality a
centre for political agitation nevertheless I have found it
re 3.
losure
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