KOALA HONG KONG UNIVERSITY mina
THE GENERAL STRIKE AND BOYCOTT OF 1925 AND AFTER.
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HE general strike and boycott started in June 1925. It is impossible for anyone who was not in Hong Kong at the time to realize how completely for some weeks the Colony was paralysed. Sir Edward Stubbs departed on the 81st October 1925; 8ir Cecil Clementi arrived on the 1st November, 1925. On the 11th November, the undergraduate mem- bers of the University gave him a party of welcome. Sir Cecil came bringing with him Sir Matthew Nathan who had just retired from the Governorship of Queensland and was on his way back to England. In replying to the Chairman's address of welcome, Sir Cecil said:-
"I also rejoice at having this opportunity, so soon after my arrival, of expressing to you my great appreciation of the very loyal manner in which you have supported your Alma Mater throughout the troubles in which this Colony is at present involved. School-boy folly, as I learn with indignation, made the first gesture in the recent strike and deliberately flouted both education and authority, but the undergraduates of the University knew better than to parti- cipate in a movement so stupid and so injurious to everyone who has been misled into joining it."
On the 27th May, 1926, Sir Paul Chater died. He was a benefactor to the University and its first Honorary Treasurer. Mr. Paul Lauder, the General Manager of the Union Insurance Society of Canton, took over the Honorary Treasurership. That year as a result of a report submitted by Mr. Lauder after an informal inspection of the University accounts, Messrs. Percy Smith, Seth & Fleming were appointed Accountants of the University, Messrs. Thomson & Co. being appointed University Auditors.
A new scholarship entitled the Chater Memorial Scholarship was in- stituted in 1929 out of funds collected locally to commemorate Sir Paul Chater. The scholarship is worth $800 a year. During that year the University also received a sum of $4,613.80 from the Wardens of the Armenian Church, Calcutta and certain friends of Sir Paul Chater in that, his native, city. donors desired that a clock should be installed in the tower of the main building of the University and this was done in 1930.
The
In 1928 Mr. Kwok Siu Lau, through the Chancellor, gave a donation of $50,000 to the University and it was decided that this money should be spent on the development of the teaching of biology. A building at the western en- On the trance of the University was converted into a biological laboratory. west wall of this building which was opened on the 30th September, 1980, there is emblazoned this quotation from the Book of Odes:-
Heaven in producing mankind gave them various faculties and relations
with their specific laws.
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