With his advice, his influence, and his
acquaintances, and
purse. To his friends,
guests,
He behaved with such sweetness of
manners
as to attach them all to his person : So happy in his conversation with them as to please all, though he flattered
лоnе.
MR. R. PONSONBY FANE.
Mr. Richard Ponsonby Fame is well known in Hongkong. (Applause.) He has served the Colony, nay the Empire in several ways, but always in a spirit of self-sacrificing devotion, which is at once evidence of his sense of service still animating his distinguished family and of that quiet and all-pervading piety which is so vital an influence in his life. Mr. Ponsonby Fane was educated at Harrow, but had to leave school young owing to indifferent health. When he was only 17 he became private secretary to the Gover nor of Natal, and he has since served four other governors in the same capacity, including Sir Matthew Nathan and Sir Henry May. He has ministered to His Majesty's representatives in Hongkong, Natal, Trinidad, Ceylon and Fiji, and five years of his life have been spent in roving over the seas mainly in search of Gover- nors, always a picturesque figure with the same brown comforter about his neck. (Laughter and applause.)
During the War, when Sir Henry May was Governor, this University was in dif- ficulty owing to teachers not being avail- able. Mr. Ponsonby Fane then came for- ward to help the University and ever since 1916 he has given himself unspar- ingly, in devoted and gratuitous service to the students of this institution. He has taught them; he has played cricket with them; and in the annals of the University Cricket Club his name is and will ever be a household word.
For some years Mr. Ponsonby Fane has made Japan his summer residence, only occasionally visiting his beautiful family seat in Somersetshire. Mr. Ponsonby Fane is always emphatic, that he is no scholar, though if genius be an infinite capacity for taking pains, few would have greater claims to the title than he has. At any rate Mr. Ponsonby Fane has published many interesting and valuable contributions to Western knowledge of things Japanese. He has published a
treatise on the Imperial Family of Japan, a treatise entitled Misasaki or the Im- perial Tombs, a treatise entitled Huitei Monogatari, or the story of certain em- perors or ex-emperors who were exiled. He has written about the ancient capitals and palaces of Japan and about the capital of Heian and its great palace. He has translated two exceedingly in- teresting Japanese books, one Kokoro No Chikari or the "Strength of the Soul": the other Satorikata No Zu OT thePath of Knowledge." Mr. Pon- sonby Fane has been a friend to the University in many ways that few know of and we welcome him with acclamation, as cne whose work in this University has been one long labour of love. (Ap- plause.)
AN APPEAL FOR THE UNIVERSITY.
more
Your Excellency, I have said that the day of your coming back to Hongkong was to us who work in the University, the dawn of a brighter era. This is not tion which is shared by all. (Applause.) a mere platform platitude, but a convic- The world is passing through a period of distress and this Colony is beating up against a strong head wind of unexpected and unmerited misfortune. We do not want to be a nuisance, to be always cry- ing poverty and clamouring for money. But surely the present is not the moment for curtailing educational work
It in Hongkong. Was the commercial community of Hongkong which brought this University into being.
"There can be no doubt," wrote the then senior part- ner of John Swire and Sons to Sir Frederick Lugard, about the merits of your scheme which strongly appeals to my partners and myself and to which we contribute, believing that a University in Hongkong will be to the advantage of the Colony and our Empire.**
"Your scheme," wrote Sir Robert Hart,
"is excellent and deserves the fullest sup- port, and it promises much that will do real good."
Standing on this very platform on the 11th March, 1912, Sir Frederick Lugard dared to say: When the petty questions which necessarily occupy our time and thoughts in the busy curriculum of the day's work are swept into oblivion, when new objects of interest rise for a new generation, this building shall stand for its purpose has a boundless horizon and it is founded on motives and principles which neither pass nor die."
in
to
to
a
never
song
have classes education; they send their public schools be inoculated against it. The War destroyed this un- belief. A change began in 1916 and since then the conviction has grown, that it is the duty of the age to furnish its youth | with its best, and that best is believed to be a liberal education, All schools and universities are filled as never before. Rich parents anxiously besiege house masters' doors, while no less eager par- ents from less wealthy homes clamour for the admission of their children into the municipal secondary schools. Nor is it hard to find a reason for this new belief in education. Force has failed, and the failure of force is education's oppor- tunity. (Applause.)
5-
We stand before the public to-day ask | European race, living as seems probable ing them not to weigh our merits, but in the steppe country east of Europe to pardon our defects. If you can't give and north of India evolved a mode of us money, we will carry on cheerfully, speech which was inflexional and poly- making the best of the little that we have syllabic: while the progenitors of the but, we do claim as a right your sym- Chinese race, who appear to have in- pathy and co-operation. (Applause.) habited the Yellow River basin, created Not many years ago,
writer in the a language which was non-inflexional and November number of the Nineteenth monosyllabic. At a much later date, Century observed: ค cynic wrote probably not earlier than the first with some truth
The
English millennium before Christ, alphabetic middle
believed scripts of various kinds were invented or adapted for the use of the Indo- European language in different parts of the world. Such are the nagari script for Sanskrit, the cuneiform script for Persian and the Phoenician script for Greek and Latin. Later still the Arabic method of writing numerals was adopted throughout Europe. Meanwhile in China the invention of a non-inflexional mono- syllabic language, in which monosyllables of the same sound are further different- iated from each other by intonation, was followed by the equally remarkable_in vention of an ideographic script. script was entirely without an alphabet and it was in origin a pictorial system. which made appeal to the eye and not to the ear. By degrees, however, all ideograms were split up-in some cases very arbitrarily into two component parts, namely a radical element which appeals to the eye and indicates the general meaning of the word, and a phonetic element which suggests the sound of the word. A good example is the ideogram au (E), which means song," and in which the radical element depicts a mouth speaking, while the rest radical prefix) would still be pronounced of the ideogram (if written without the
au and is a picture of three mouths grouped together.
THE CHANCELLOR'S ADDRESS.
Sir CECIL CLEMENTI said:-I value very highly the added opportunities which are now given to the Governor of Hongkong for assisting in the educational progress of the Colony by reason of the fact that he is ex-offin Chancellor of the Hong- kong University. I must also thank you most sincerely for the welcome you have given me on the occasion of this, my first, ceremonial visit to the University as its Chancellor and for the honorary degree which the University has con- ferred upon me. It will be my constant- aim to promote the academic interests which are thus committed to my care and, with your permission, I propose to-day in my inaugural address to pre sent for your consideration certain ideas which I trust may be helpful to that section of the Faculty of Arts in this University which concerns itself with things Chinese.
In the remote age, when human speech was first becoming articulate, two inven- tions of far-reaching importance were made by widely sundered races of man- kind. The progenitors of the Indo-
This
THE NEED OF A COMMON SPEECH IN CHINA,
8
Now the obvious advantage of picture writing as distinct from alphabetic script is that the picture at once suggests the meaning of a word, but the alphabet does not. obvious disadvantage of picture writing On the other hand the equally
is that the idea conveyed by the ideogram can be spoken in a multitude of ways, whereas a word written alphabetically has, subject of course to different nuances of pronunciation among different peoples, only one sound. If I point to a picture of a man and ask a child to tell me what it is, the English child will say man,
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