ABSTRACT
More than ever there was a need for a repository of knowledge about Asia that could be made available to those who needed it. The Society could supply that better perhaps than any other organisation. As the new Chairman, Sir William Dickson, pointed out, the Society now had a more enhanced role than in the past when there was no lack of statesmen and administrators in the East to keep its problems in everyone’s mind. Most had now come home and there was thus a danger of a serious ignorance about the area among the current generation. This viewpoint was reinforced by Lord Home in 1977: ‘Your Society exists and is composed of individuals who have known Asia, who have lived in Asia, and who have traded in Asia and who understand what significance Asia holds for the rest of the world . . . We shall need to rely on that kind of experience more and more as political and diplomatic knowledge of that continent becomes scantier. An ounce of experience in these matters is worth one ton of theory.’
