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11 SIR FREDERICK LUGARD 1907-1911 Once more l\lr F. H. May aùmimstered thc government for three months until the arrival of the new Governor in July 1907, and the first section of the Tai Tam Tuk waterworks being finished within this perìod, the honour of declarìng open Hong Kong's latest rescrvoir fell to him. It was an occasion of general congratulation, for with an addition of two hundred million gallons to the storage capacity the percnnial problem of providìng enough water for the cxpanding town was surely solved at last and the water famine of 1902 could be forgotten with impunity. Such at least was the general belief, but an exceptional drought in the spring of 月 10 was to serve as a 間minder that other considerations besides the size of the receptade were involved in the solution to Hong Kong's water problcm. Within five years, so swiftly did the Chinese pour in, the cry of shortage would again be heard annualJv. The new Governor, Sir Frederick Lugard, had already haù a remarkable military career chiefty in Africa and had also served with distinction as Commissioner and Commander-in-Chief of Northern Nigeria. He was destined, after completing his term in Hong Kong, to gather fresh laurels both as High Commissioner of Nigeria and, under the title and digmtv of Baron Lugard, as an elder statesman of the Empire. He was greeted on his arrival by the report of the Sanitary Commission of 1906-a thorny subject. The plain truth was that sanitary affairs in the Colony now required a considerable permanent staff and that such a staff could not be adequately directed by a committee large or small, official, uno伍cial or half-and-half, nor even by an officer ",'hose other 0伍cial duties occupied much of his time. However, the existing system tended to throw the expert in the front line -the Medical Officer of Health-at the head of the expert at he.\dquarters-the Principal Civi1 Medical 0鼠的r-with the automatic result that prevention tended to be subordinated to cure. It may well be too that curative medicine, with its established position and its unchallenged claim to be par excellence the field of the expe吋， had yet to adjust itself [907-[9[T 97 to the comparatively novel outlook of prevention, whose prescriptions were simple, annoying and unromantic, and whose clientele, so far from being a 8uccession ()f private patients, was an active and impatient public. Lugard's remedy for the complaint was to substitute for the President of the Sanitary Board a layman drawn from the Cadet service, and to place him in administrative charge of a Sanitary Department with the Medical Officer of Health as his expert adviser-a solution which was duly embodied in the Public Health and Buildings Ordinance by an amending Ordinance, No. 14 of 1908. It was a solution involving the replacement of professional by lay, physician by administrator, and ωsuch it came in for íts fulI share of local críticism. But the aspect of the change which seems to have escaped notice is that it meant also the supersession of a permanent 0伍cial personally responsible by a succession of temporary Iieutenant.'l. Having thus disposed of a troublesome carry-over from the past, Sir Frederick proceeded without a moment's delay to enunciate a proposition,or at least to proclaim a vision, of his own. In a speech delivered in December 1907, he publicly advocated the foundation of a university in the Colony. Thus far, the Queen's College marked the high-water mark of educational facilities in Hong Kong, if we except the local College of Medicine-well enough for the small tradesman, the clerk, the shroff and the interpreter, passable perhaps for the elementary school teacher-but there were some at least to whom it occurred that a community so prosperous should not, for lack of facilities for higher study, lie under the imputation of condemning the great Dulk of its members to remain indefinitely hewers of wood and drawers ofwater. There were some too who saw in a university in Hong Kong a un-ique opportunity for gently introducing to China the ways of the West both scientific and philosophical. There were even one or two who saw a favourable chance of introducing no less gently to England something of the philosophy of the East. The time appeared peculiarly oPPortune, for after the collapse of...

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