BY AIR MAIL.
54093/41.
Colonial Office,
Downing Street.
23 October, 1941.
Personal and Confidential.
Dear Sir Mark,
N04)
I send you at once the attached copy of letter which I have just received from Northcote on board his ship, in which you will see he has unburdened himself of his ideas on several important Hong Kong problems. Briefly() we do not know the facts about the Cressall Commission, but there have been references to events related to it in press telegrams from Hong Kong which have appeared in the newspapers here, and no doubt we shall it all in due course.
(2) The Cadet Service is one of the matters which Northcote was intending to think further about on his voyage back to Hong Kong last winter, and he intended to compile a memorandum, with his suggestions, for its re-organisation.
The University was, as you know, the subject of a very controversial report by a Commission in Hong Kong before the war, and then when the Vice-Chancellor came home in 1939 and Northcote himself in 1940, we were fully informed here of the local position and the need of substantial help from sources other than Colonial revenues to re-establish it as an Intertia Institution with the widest British purpose. Especially were we impressed with the need to secure an open and practical expression of H.M.G.'s interest in it, and we were on the point of success, as we thought, in that respect when the outbreak of war was held by the Treasury to preclude substantial grant, which we were seeking. help we ultimately got from the Rhodes Trust and the British Council was certainly better than nothing, but after the war we intend to re-open the campaign with the Treasury. Sloss knows our side of the story, as well as the University side, and I know that Northcote always had the very greatest confidence in his judgment and capacity in University matters as well as in other affairs.
The
SIR MARK YOUNG, K.C.M.G.
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