The Vice-Chancellor Sir William Hornell, K.T., C.I.E., LL.D., M.A. (Oxford), wrote and delivered the following citation:
Your Excellency, Ladies and Gentlemen. Mr. Paul Lauder’s father was one of the many Scotchmen who prefer to live in England. His son’s boyhood was spent in a suburb of South London, then a very pleasant place, and he was educated at the City of London School. On leaving school he joined an underwriter at Lloyds. In 1899 he was taken into the Underwriting Room of the China Traders Insurance Company (now known as the British Traders Insurance Co). In 1900 the China Traders Insurance Co. sent Mr. Paul Lauder to China and on the subsequent amalgamation of the two companies he became a member of staff of the Union Insurance Society of Canton Ltd. Then came three years of service in Japan, a year in Shanghai and eleven years in Calcutta. Lauder Sahib is still a household word among the Bengalee clerks who worked with him in the Calcutta office in Clive St., and their many descendents – he is still their father and their mother.
In 1919 Mr. Lauder came back to Hong Kong to become chief assistant to the late Mr. C. Montague Ede. In July 1924 he was appointed General Manager of the Union Insurance Society of Canton. Many of you know better than I do the position which the Union Insurance Society occupies today among the Insurance companies of the world. I know how grudgingly Mr. Lauder has given up his time to the service of the University. He served on the committee which re-organized the sterling salaries; he has overhauled our system of accounts and balance sheets; for all that he has ever been the unsleeping watchdog of the University’s finances, the well-being of every member of the University staff has been his constant care.
His public services have not been confined to the University. He was a member of the Committee on which was placed the responsibility of considering every salary paid to a Government servant in this Colony. Since 1924 he has been a member of the Committee of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce; he is Vice-Chairman of the Alice Memorial and Associated Hospitals, a member of the Council of St. Stephen’s College, a member of the Committee of the Young Men’s Christian Association, and of the Governing Body of the Matilda Hospital.
An unassuming man, a lover of an armchair a book and a pipe, those who know him best realize most strongly that he took up public service reluctantly and from a sheer sense of duty. May he be happy in his retirement; those who have worked with him in this University will not forget him.
Citation written and delivered by Sir William Hornell, Vice-Chancellor.
