Mr. Bruce Lockhart takes stron: exception to the following sentence in my letter,—"Under existing conditions, to preserve the tone of the school, Eurasians should be excluded." My use of the word, "tone," is unfortunate, and it is certainly not my intention to re-fleet on the morals of a large section of the local British population, whose reputation in this respect. possibly compares quite favourably With that of the purely white section. With your permission Sir, I will correct the offending clause, which, as amended, will read, "Under existing conditions, te preserve the standing of the school, it should be reserved for boys of purely British origin."
Mr. Lockhart enters into an able defence of Eurasians and refers to their deeds in war and in peace with legitimate pride. His case is certainly a strong one. I am probably an older man and I hope Mr. Lockhart will not mind my suggesting that he does not strengthen his position, but tends to weaken it, by descending to personalities, tinged with a suspicion of vulgarity.
Your correspondent is quite right in asserting that no exception is taken to the presence of Eurasiars in "those rather ov ~-rated institutions" (sic!), the public schools of England. That, of course, is because in England racial ' prejudice is practically non-existent. Lut it is equally true that, if it were possible to move such a schoo! from England to China, one of the first regulations it would have w adopt—'"'under existing conditions"—would be to exclude pupils of other than purely white extraction. It is a difficult question and, as we al] know, the same difficulty exists in India. South Africa, and parts of the United States. The whit man's attitude is probably due to determination to keep his end up when he finds himself in a minority among non-European races. Illogical as it may seem, obviously unfair in its results in individual cases, the hard facts of the situation have to be faced in deciding on the "standing" of a Iceal British school.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.