Liberty & Education

The A. B. C. C. C. this week launch a drive in the U. S. for $250,000. Of all funds collected in the U. S. probably few will buy as much. A. B. C. C. C. are the Associated Boards for Christian Colleges in China. In the course of 75 years, for the price of one U. S. heavy cruiser (about $15,000,000), U. S. Protestants have built 13 colleges* in China. Their influence has been out of all proportion to their cost. More than half of the university alumni listed in Who's Who in China graduated from these 13. Knowing that it needs bright men as well as brave men, the Chinese Government has encouraged students to stay in school. This autumn the 13 colleges opened with a record enrollment of 7,734, up 20% from peacetime school year 1936-37.

Eleven of the 13 colleges have had to leave their prewar campuses. But not one campus has been abandoned to the Japanese ; under U. S. and Chinese control they are being used for relief and reconstruction programs for China's war-struck millions. Despite their record enrollments in the new scholastic locations, the Christian colleges have been able to take only one in five of qualified applicants. But even with makeshift equipment and a great lack of books, all are giving full courses. Says Executive Secretary Bettis Austin Garside of the A. B. C. C. C.: "If China needs engineers, she asks Hangchow Christian College for them, and gets them. If China needs trained organizers of cooperatives, she asks the University of Nanking for them, and gets them. If China needs medical supplies, she asks West China Union University to find them in the plants and chemicals of Szechwan, and she gets them. If China needs scientific experimentalists in rural reconstruction, she asks Yenching for them, and gets them."

Typical is Hua Chung College. Japanese air raids drove it from its campus at Wuchang. Japanese planes later bombed it out of Kweilin. Salvaging what equipment they could, Hua Chung's students and faculty trekked over 800 miles west to remote Yunnan Province.

Hua Chung's resourceful Physicist David Hsiung set up the only power plant within hundreds of miles by coaxing the engine of an old Studebaker bus to burn charcoal, a Diesel engine to run on walnut oil. The biology department began crossbreeding different varieties of Yunnan ducks to get a new, improved strain. While the college faculty was considering the best way to spread the Christian message in Hsichow (no missionary had ever worked there), a student quite independently set the ball rolling by converting two local schoolteachers. Hua Chung had no caps & gowns for its graduating class last July. But it had trained brains for the new China.

Nanking University, now moved some 900 miles west to Chengtu, has faced similar problems. Its organizers have taught thousands of refugee peasants to help themselves and China by training them to work portable bamboo spinning wheels, spin wool yarn for army blankets. Only outside materials the program needs are steel for spindles and aluminum for spinning forks. These come from shot-down Japanese airplanes. Thus far the supply of metal has been quite adequate.

*Cheeloo, Fukien Christian, Ginling, Hangchow Christian, Hua Chung, Hwa Nan, Lingan, Nanking, St. John's, Shanghai, Soochow, West China Union, Yenching.

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