The University was an invention of King Fuad’s, who had always been anxious to be known as a patron of the arts and sciences. There had been a Cairo University before this one, but it had been nationalistic in its policy and, not being directed by European experts or supported by the Government, had soon come to an end. The new University had been planned ambitiously. There were faculties of science, medicine and letters, with a full complement of highly-paid professors; only one or two of these were Egyptian, the rest being English, Swedish, French and Belgian. The medicine and science faculties were predominantly English, but the appointments to the faculty of letters were predominantly French. They had been made in the summer months when the British High Commissioner was out of Egypt, or he would no doubt have discountenanced them. Only one of the French and Belgian professors had any knowledge of English, and none of them had any knowledge of Arabic. Of the two hundred Egyptian students, who were mostly the sons of rich merchants and landowners, fewer than twenty had more than a smattering of French—just enough for shopping purposes—though they had all learned English in the secondary schools. All official university correspondence was in Arabic. I was told that it was classical Arabic, in which no word is admitted that is of later date than Mohammed, but I could not tell the difference. The ‘very learned Sheikh’ Graves had to take his letters to the post office for interpretation. My twelve or thirteen French colleagues were men of the highest academic distinction. But two or three English village-schoolmasters would have been glad to have undertaken their work at one-third of their salaries and done it far better. The University building had been a harem-palace of the Khedive. It was French in style, with mirrors and gilding.