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 77

COPY.

COMMENTS BY MR. SLOSS ON PARAGRAPHS 1-4

OF

74

In Section 1.

to teachers and doctors I should be disposed to add engineers. There is going to be a great deal to be done in public works which will create a demand for assistant engineers and overseers.

In Section 3. You refer to the need of a commission to test public

feeling in Malaya and Hong Kong about a projected

F. Eastern University. Would it not be necessary for the Governments in these Colonies first to agree that there was substance in such a project to justify the sending of a commission? I think that it is certain that this project has never yet had the consideration of the Governments in these places. I mention this as a new cause for delay. On the other hand this project would not concern either the Foreign Office or the Treasury as, I assume, it would have little to do with our relations with China, and it would be financed by the Colonies. Herein, there might be

an economy of time.

Unless

It is, perhaps, possible to over-stress the danger of delay. I do not know what the position may be in Malaya, but we have no buildings, no equipment and very little staff. Alternative buildings are not likely to be obtainable, as so many school buildings have been destroyed, houses and factories have to be rebuilt and there is bound to be a serious shortage of building materials for some time. Equipment is at present as rare as fine gold. we can share in material reparations taken from Japanese laboratories the process of equipping even elementary laboratories for preliminary medical training in physics, chemistry and biology is going to be slow. At present we have no senior staff in the Chemistry and Physics Department, save for one lecturer; only senior man in biology is now working in the Agriculture and Fisheries Department of the Hong Kong Government. sad deficiencies, constitute for me, a providential interposition; they give us time to think.

and our

These, our

I entirely agree with you in what you say of the need to refer some of the points at issue to the new Universities Advisory Committee. But I would like to add a further consideration. The Committee will be in the main, I imagine, concerned with new Universities in places where there are large, rather backward farming populations, places, in fact, where the term Colony has a very different connotation from what it has when it is used of Hong Kong which is, in essence, a safe harbour operated largely by people whose permanent domicile is Gt. Britain, the Dominions or China. Agriculture can never amount to anything, fisheries may, and industry will be the creature either of colonial preference or of "Customs" agreement with China. The Colony's dependence on good relations with China is so absolute that all policy, including University policy, raises issues which cannot affect even the West Indies in the same degree and to the same extent. We all are flattered by our conviction that we are the unique case, but I honestly think that Hong Kong, in this matter is genuinely different. The founders of the University seemed to see this and hence the emphasis on orisulation (a wrong word) towards China. And, from all this, I conclude we are or ought to be the child of the F.0. even if a slightly supersiliously regarded bantling. chief reason for my note arises out of your

But, the

Section 4.