CO129-512-5 Boxer Indemnity Settlement 21-5-1929 - 21-5-1929 — Page 131

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Indenmity Fund should be entrusted to a Board of

Trustees to be appointed by the Chinese Government,

I ventured to dissent from these proposals which I

regarded (and still regard) as neither practical

nor fair to the University of Hong Kong. But these

proposals do represent what to me appears to be a real attempt to interpret the spirit of the China Indemnity Act and of the intentions which placed that Act on the Statute Book. The present proposals seem

to stultify all that His Majesty's representatives and the members of the Advisory Committee have said and done since December 1922, when the intention of devoting to China's benefit the British share of the Indemnity was announced. This appears to me all the more regrettable, when I think of all the educational work for the Chinese which the Government of the United States has been able to do on the strength of its share of the Indemnity and how this work has added to American influence and prestige in China. the French Government, whose interests in China are negligible as compared with those of Great Britain has decided to devote its share of the Indemnity to attaching a Chinese Faculty to the Sorbonne in Paris. I understand that Lord Buxton and the members of the Advisory Committee have expressed themselves as being in agreement with the very different proposals now made and that they advocate the adoption of these proposals at the earliest opportunity. only say that I am astonished.

Even

I can

11. The Chinese Government is to be asked to agree to a sum of £250,000 being deducted from the deposited funds of the Indemnity and handed over

to the Hong Kong University; but I also gather

that