CO129-593-2 Rehabilitation of Hong Kong University. For extracted photographs see CN 3-45. Includes 32 photographs depicting-... 10-1-1945 - 20-1-1946 — Page 12

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like Mr. Rowell, will not be able to assist the Committee actively for long, if as members of the Hong Kong Planning Unit they are likely to be going to the Fur East before so very long.

(c) Should Dr. Priestley be unable to serve, I think it is very desirable that he should be replaced by another eminent member of a British University staff, preferably like Dr. Priestley, a member of the Asquith Commission, to ensure that the general policy advocated by that Commission is not lost sight of. No doubt the file may be recirculated later for further consideration of this if Dr. Priestley declinės.

I am

(a) I think Professor Chumon may be surprised and hurt when he realises that he has not been asked to serve on this Co...mittee. I am bound to agree with Mr. Rowell that his presence would be likely to lead to delay and possibly to friction, X as he has developed a rather doctrinaire

approach to these matters and finds it difficult to compromise grucefully. not sure whether he has been led to expect that he will be a member of such a Collitteg He was brought in upon at least one of the earlier discussions in the Office at which I was present. He could always be told, I suppose, that we assumed that now he had taken up his whole-time business post, he would not have time to turn up for the meetings of this Committee, us may indeed be the case. At the same time, the view attributed to Professor Chan..on by Mr. Rowell at X in his minute of 12/5/45, i.e. that there is only room for one first class British University in the Far East may, conceivably, be right; and I hope that the establishment of this Committee on the eve of the Asquith Commission's Report in which such a view might possibly (I have

no