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 144

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support of higher education in China.

For the rest, I should like to express my agreement with the proposal for exchange of teachers and students (and of course, I should add, research workers) between Hongkong University and the various Chinese Universities, (Ch. IV,#11, p.8). But here again, such a scheme will not work unless the University attains a really high standard, and can offer gifts which would be generally regarded as desirable, as well as receiving them. It may be added in this connection, that in my experience the four best Chinese Universities already mentioned (Peiching, Chinghua, Nankai and Chekiang) are, for level of critical standards, though not of course for total bulk of scientific achievement, about equal to such Universities as Cambridge and Oxford. The standard which Hongkong has to attain, therefore, is distinctly high.

I think the whole question turns to some extent upon one's conception of a University. I may repeat here what I have often said to representatives of the "Christian" or "missionary" universities in China, when pressed for my opinion. I consider that, no doubt owing to lack of funds, but partly (I believe) of set intent, these universities (with the exception of Yenching) have copied American "junior Colleges", with the aim of turning out Christian citizens rather than forming disinterested centres of true science and learning. I maintain that unless a university has at least a few really great men within it, there is never any oppor- tunity for an undergraduate to catch the divine flame. I so vividly remember how I myself, though a medical student, listened at Cambridge to old Professor Burkitt's lectures on the Manichees, and to E.G. Browne descanting on Arabian science. Only in this way can the young understand what the

A disinterested life of science and learning is all about. world of Y.M.C.A. secretaries and Christian Educators, weighed in the balance against this other, is found wanting.

There is a passage in Ch.IV(#.2,p.8) with which I do not agree, namely that in which it is suggested that the Hongkong University "might serve usefully as a distributing agency for books and equipment given in Great Britain to assist the Chinese Universities". I think these words were probably written before the fall of Hongkong. Now that the British Council has built up a rather large and quite efficient organisation in China, which will ultimately settle probably in Peiping under the leadership of Prof. P.M. Roxby the well- known geographer, with branches in most of the big centres, I do not think this function could suitably be ascribed to Hongkong University.

I had hoped to have been able to include some latest

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