CO129-538-1 Hong Kong University 31-12-1931 - 6-8-1932 — Page 208

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Treasury at any time rendered the payment of the stipulated

interest difficult or impossible, the Board would have no ob-

vious remedy, and the educational enterprises on which it might

have embarked would have to be abandoned for want of money.More-

over, if the monies coming into the hands of the Board of Trust-

ees are really paid out of the ordinary revenue of the State and are not the actual earnings of the Board's invested funds, neither China nor Great Britain will be entitled to look upon the educational work which the Board may succeed in carrying out as a gift (which the returned Boxer indemnity money actually is) from the British taxpayer to the people of China. (On this point reference may be made to the leport of the Advisory Com- mittee, pp.157-159.) Such work will be carried on out of Chinese State-funds, whereas the remitted indemnity money will be devoted to carrying out projects of railway' "rehabilitation” for the purposes (1) of giving employment to British workmen (for it is stipulated that all the money is to be spent in England), and (2) of reconditioning the railways so that they may be able, sooner or later, to pay off old debts due to British bondholders. That at least is what may be said, with some show of justice, by the Chinese.

The outstanding difference between the investment proposal put forward by the Willingdon Delegation and that substituted for it in the recent Exchange of lotes is that according to the first the endowment plan was looked upon as a safe and lucrative means to an end the real end being the educational projects dealt with in the Report; whereas accord- ing to the second, the interests of eduction and culture H are wholly subordinated to the main purpose of rehabilitating the railways. The Willingdon Cave Report would reject any endowment scheme that did not give security and a fair promise of a profitable return to be applied to cultural purpose: the Lampson-Wang agreement says nothing about "a safe and profit- able form of investment" but merely assigns for educational and