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13 SIR HENRY MAY 1912-1919 ln the spring of 191I Sir Henry May had left on promotion to the Governorship of F叭， being succeeded as Colonial Secretary first by Mr Warren Barnes and then, when Barnes had died suddenly on the polo ground shortly after taking up his duties, by Mr Claude Severn, also a civil servant from Malaya. The following summer, Lugard announced his own approaching departure to amalgamate the two Nigerias,and also the impending return of Sir Henry May as Governor. He had spent over thirty years in the Colony and, besides long administrative experience and unrivalled local knowledge, he had studied the language and local customs. No doubt some will maintain, however, that intimate acquaintance with local problems and local personalities mav be an embarrassment rather than an asset and that it is the width rather than the depth of the experience that counts. It is a debatable point. The appoin位nent was clearly exceptional; not only was this the first occasion on which a local cadet officer had risen 1:0 the highest rank in the Colony, it was the first time that the governorship had been entrusted to a permanent 0伍cial drawn from the ordinary cadre of the administrative service. The times were exceptional too, but it su侃ces for us to take note that at a time when the Chinese empire was tottering Sir Henry May was called back to direct the fortunes of Hong Kong. He had been appointed a cadet in 1881 and with his Chinese teacher was given the tω.k of providing for future generations a version of the Anglo-Chinese textbook prescribed for cadets. Ten years later he acted as private secretary to the Officer Administering the Government, Major-General Digby Barker, whose daughter he married. As Captain Superintendent of Police from 1893• 902 he found perhaps his true métier. He rendered conspicuous service both in connection with the first plague epidemic in 1894 and in the taking-over of the New Territories in 1899, but his name will also be remembered as the creator of the rural police organization and for the vigorous purge with which he expelled corrupt elements from the urban force. For 112 Sir Hmry lIIay the last eight years he had been Colonial Secretary and had administered the government on the departure both of Blake in 1904 and of Nathan in 1907 and was knighted for his services. As a man of action he had something in common with Lugard, and yet it would be difficult to find a greater contrast in that May possessed a fearless impetuosity, for which we must go back to Macdonnell for a parallel, and a grimness all his own. While he had been away in Fiji from 19II-1912 great changes had taken place in China, changes which may be crystallized in the reflection that, whereas in the spring of 1911 a Chinese discarded his queue at the risk of losing his head, in the spring of 時間 he risked his head who kept his queue. With this abrupt change of fashion, western clothes and effects were now in much demaI}d.and.ev~n thoug~ 'pins and walkin~ ~ti.cks' m~d~ no ~re~ter appeal than in the past,* cigarettes wcre widely smoked and pipes occ的ionally. Small fortunes were made in foreign 臼阱， paid for by the forsaken queue, thanks to a steady. demand among the countries of the West for human hair. The old order had gone, giving place thus far only to disorder, and while young China in its foreign cap saw no inconsistency in vociferously denouncing the foreign treaties, old China, in the person of the scholar and official, crept silently away and the immemorial pirate and brigand ventured from his hiding-place ag訟n. When the overthrow of the Chinese empire began, and Tartar General and bannermen had been driven from Canton, Hong Konlr's first reaction was to await the return of more normal times. But as the months p的sed and lengthened into years the sad truth dawned: that happy state of peace, progress and prosperity which Englishmen in China had begun to regard almost as their birthright had been swept away. When the neighbouring continent, besides the familiar scourges of plague, pestilence and famine, had now to face simultaneously all those other evils-sedition, privy conspiracy, rebellion, battle, murder and sudden death-from which a Christian litany so quaintly ωked deliverance, one had to expect a...

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