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15 THE ORDINANCE AND A PETITION L ugard thought the ceremony had gone off very well indeed. His speech had been delivered without notes 'before an immense audience' of nearly two thousand dignitaries. 'I did my best', he considered. The ordeal over, he relaxed at Government House and wrote all about it to Flora, sending her a copy of the speeches. 'You will like dear old Mody's reference to you,' he said, 'he almost worships you, dear old man - when he read that part in a voice of feeling and an almost reverential tone, there was great applause . . . I am in great spirits tonight. Physically perhaps it is the reaction after the double tension of your illness and this Ordeal, but it is founded on good cause.' The near prospect of joining her in Abinger on hiS mid~term leave, coupled with the success of the launching, put him in excellent humour. 'The sunshme of the outer world has got into my heart this evening', he told her. Few copies of Mody's Souvenir remained. More were needed. Lugard reissued it four days later with the speeches and more appendices, bearing a new title and a less flamboyant cover in 'government blue'. Thereafter, it was widely referred to in the Umversity as the 'Blue Book'. It was quoted frequently up to the end of the Second World War, in support of all kinds of proposals, whether for closer academic cooperation with China, impenal endowment, or any other purpose to which its phrases seemed to the proposer to offer sympathy. Seeing that it required some annotation, if readers in England unfamiliar with conditions in Hong Kong and China were to comprehend some statements that might otherwise seem strange to them, he prepared a supplementary document for the purpose before leaving, and had enough printed for him to distribute there while on leave. . In an immediate response to all the public fuss, and with the modesty and gratitude whiCh marked his manner, Mody named all his eight donor scholarships after Lugard, who found a suitable public occasion to announce the gesture. Before he left at the end of April for Japan, and onward by the trans~Siberian railway, Lugard still had two more ceremonies to take part in. The day before sailing he handed over letters patent of knighthood at an official Government House dinner and reception for Mody. And the leading members of the Chinese community presented him with an address so splendid that he might have been leavmg never to return. The warmth of its phrases, creaking with hyperbole, must have been a great encouragement. Of its five paragraphs in red Chinese and English script, all ornately bordered in gold leaf, two were devoted to the University: It is education which moulds and forms men's talents. China IS now mtent on reform 142 Lugard In Hong Kong and for this purpose education IS the most urgent need. But In few of the provinces is there a University and hence the young men who have the aspirations of a sch.)lar and seek a higher education, much against the wishes of their father their brothers and their elders, have to carry their books and luggage across many an ocean In search of a teacher. Since Your Excellency came to give peace to this state, all the business or administration has been carned on by you with success, but you have regarded the development of education and the encouragement of talent as your most important duty, and all your energies and faculties have been devoted to the establishment of a University. Now the f( )undation stone has been duly laid and the magnificent project is on the way to reahzation we feel confident that in the future the result of the education given In the University Will fulft! ,Ill expectations. Lugard spent the spring and summer of 1910 in England, while May acted for him in Hong Kong. HIs distance from office and May's long expenence and sure hand freed him from all immediate wornes, and he spent some of his time at Abinger, where he might devote himself peacefully to Flora and his brother Edward and family. There, tl)O, he engaged in a number of sedentary activities: writing the article which forms the Prologue to this account, studying the material on university administration he collected from London University during several visits, and pressing the case among distinguished friends such as J01-eph Chamberlain, who had admired the...

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