Social_Welfare_Annual_Report_1966-1967 — Page 60

that stability is not to be taken for granted. It is no function of this report to dilate upon the causes of the riots; views on these and on their respective values vary, and here can be no finality. The outstand- ing fact is that the riots happened, and in whatever ways are open to us we have to ensure that our policies and their implementation are designed to promote stability so that the physically and morally destructive experience of rioting may not recur to disturb steady progress. Whether we are engaged in education or in law enforcement, in primary production or in social work the basic aim must be a society that is stable--but not one that is static. We must distinguish between rocking the boat and keeping it in motion in choppy waters.

116. This may involve hard choices for those of us who are involved in social work, as for those employed in other valuable fields of work. There may for example be occasions when a choice has to be made between giving emphasis to the solution of problems by curative methods and concentrating on the preventive but necessarily longer term pursuit of social action. There may again be a need to choose between the maintenance of the highest professional standards, which almost inevit- ably imply limited services, and a recognition that the needs of the time are so demanding that services have to be provided on a substantially wider basis with professional skill more thinly spread. There may be a need for accommodation between the ideals of scientific research and survey before action and the pragmatic belief that much can continue to be provided in the future on the empirical evidence of what has worked in the past. We may have to face the need for new thought as to the responsibility of the authorities to enquire more closely into use of precious resources as a necessary corollary of greater provision of such resources to voluntary organizations.

117. Certainly there will be a need for the most perfect development of which we are capable of the capacity for persons of all classes, official and unofficial, paid and unpaid, professional and administrative, to work together in amity, generosity and dedication in the interest of those who look to them for needs of all kinds. It will also inevitably involve a wider recognition of the fact that resources can only be com- mitted once, that for example money spent on social welfare cannot be spent also on education or the Police Force or public playgrounds, and that if more is required for all it has to be provided from what Hong Kong produces or receives; or that personnel trained and com- mitted to teaching or medicine or commerce or industry cannot also be made available for social work, and that here as in finance or any

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