CO129-593-3 Rehabilitation of Hong Kong University. For extracted photographs see CN 3-45 12-1-1946 - 27-10-1946 — Page 16

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of Hong Kong alone do not justify the maintenance

of a University, but that is a subsidiary issue

which will not arise if their main contention is accepted.

The report has been fully discussed by me with Mr. Caine, Mr. Cox and the Department; we also brought Mr. Sloss, the Vice-Chancellor of the Hong Kong University, into our discussions so far as was necessary. An immediate issue with which Mr. Sloss was particularly concerned was whether the University should be reopened, as was contemplated locally, in a few weeks' time. On that, as a result of discussion, our considered view was that so long as there was any chance of establishing the University on the wider basis contemplated by the Committee, it should not open with any narrower conception or basis. Mr. Sloss accordingly sent

to Sir M. Young the telegram at No.43 and I followed that up with the long semi-official letter at No.46 in which, in order to give Sir M. Young the proper background, I told him that while the report of the Committee had not been submitted to the Secretary of State, our view at the departmental level, which we should recommend to the Secretary of State, was that the report should be sent to Mr. Bevin with unqualified support of the principal recommendation and the suggestion that, if Mr. Bevin agreed, there should be a joint Colonial Office and Foreign Office submission to the Chancellor in favour of the acceptance of that recommendation, which involves capital expenditure of the order of £1,000,000 and recurrent expenditure estimated at £85,600. If the wider purpose of the University is accepted, only that proportion of the expenditure, both capital and recurrent, which can be said to be required to meet the needs of Hong Kong could properly be charged to C.D. and W. funds. The balance would have to come from other U.K. sources and that would be the purpose of the approach to the Chancellor.

This question is, of course, tied up with the wider one of the future of the Colony of Hong Kong. If any move in the way of concession to the Chinese is to be made in that matter, then the case for really substantial financial support of Hong Kong University from U.K. funds must, of course, be seriously weakened. It will, I suggest, be better not at this stage to connect these two questions in any letter to Mr. Bevin but to leave this to be worked out in the discussions between the two Departments which will follow if Mr. Bevin agrees in principle to the main also agus recommendation and that the details of the suggested

joint approach to the Chancellor should be tackled as quickly as possible by officers of the two Departments.

A draft is submitted of a letter for the Secretary of State's signature to Mr. Bevin supporting the main recommendation in the report and taking generally the line indicated above. Also a further draft of a letter which, too, the Secretary of State may be prepared to sign, thanking the signatories of the report, other than the three who are members of the Office, for the services which they have thus given.

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23.8.46.