The preliminary statement issued bythe Hongkong Government with regard to the first report of the Commission appointed to inquire into. the working of the Hongkong University, shows that the University from a financial point of view can hardly be regarded as being in a satisfactory condition. With a deficit on the year's working of $145,000, an accrued bank overdraft of $500,000 and an accrued deficit on the endowment sinking fund of 870,000 the position might very well be regarded with dismay, it not, that we know the University has come to stay and that money will be found to_carry Unlike many an older Univer Hongkong is—by reason of its extreme youth—without an adequate endowment fund, but it has behind it the resources of the Colony, and, it may be supposed, the goodwill of every Briton in the Far East who realizes the importance of that institution of learning. The insistence of the Commission that the present faculties of medicine, engineering; and arts should be continued an improved emphasizes the fact that the University not only now fills a need but is destined to supply an even greater want in the future. That the Governor of the Colony and the Legislative Council are in accord with these views means that the only real outstanding question is one-of ways and means, The difficulties in this connexion are more apparent than real, and the opinion can be ventured' that the maintenance of the University being one of those things so vital to British educational policy in the Far East, British commercial interests as a whole would not be: behindhand with assistance could the matter be brought—sufficiently home to them.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.