CO129-524-2 Hong Kong University- financial position- Chinese studies- future of the Chinese school and the Annual... 27-1-1930 - 12-8-1930 — Page 112

105

- 3 -

provinces would look as Englishmen look to Oxford

and Cambridge

C

for authoritative guidance in the

study of their language, their literature, their history, their archaeology, their folklore, their

religious beliefs, and the whole fabric of their

civilization. If the Chinese thus came to think of

Hong Kong with affection as a place in which all that

is dear to them is treasured, in which all that is

hallowed for them by past tradition is carefully studied, and in which all that may help them in their renaissance is made accessible and intelligible, and is adapted to their needs, then we may, I believe,

look into the future with serene assurance; for this

Colony would not in that event stand aloof from the

trend of Chinese thought and aspirations; it would not

be merely a commercial outpost from which Great Britain

watches over the trade of her subjects in China; but

it would be in the forefront of the movement which,

sooner or later, will bring to the distraught and

harassed peoples of China an end to revolution, an

end to chaos and anarchy, a dawn of better things,

of law and order and settled government, and which

finally will carry that ancient land to a stage of

development higher and nobler than it has hitherto

attained, because Chinese ideals ethical, social

and intellectual will have passed through the

alembic of the moral, political and scientific

teaching of the West, and come forth, not Europeanized

or Americanized, but embellished and enriched by assimilation of all that the East can profitably learn

from the West.

4.

I am encouraged by Your Lordship's

confidential