British officials at the Ministry of Education told me that I must keep the British flag flying in the faculty of letters. This embarrassed me. I had not come to Egypt as an ambassador of Empire, and yet I did not intend to let the French indulge in semi-political activities at my expense. The dean, M. Grégoire, was a Belgian, an authority on Slav poetry. He was tough, witty, and ran his show very plausibly. He had acquired a certain slyness and adaptability during the war when, as a civilian in Belgium under German occupation, he had edited an underground anti-German publication. The professor of French Literature had lost a leg in France. He greeted me at first in a patronizing way: I was his young friend rather than his dear colleague. But as soon as he learned that I also had bled in the cause of civilization and France I became his most esteemed chum. The Frenchmen lectured, but with the help of Arabic interpreters, which did not make either for speed or accuracy. I found that I was expected to give two lectures a week, but the dean soon decided that if the students were ever to dispense with the interpreters they must be given special instruction in French—which reduced the time for lectures, so that I had only one a week to give. This one was pandemonium. The students were not hostile, merely excitable and anxious to show their regard for me and liberty and Zaghlul Pasha and the well-being of Egypt, all at the same time. I often had to shout at the top of my loudest barrack-square voice to restore order. They had no textbooks of any sort; there were no English books in the University library, and it took months to get any through the French librarian. This was January and they were due for an examination in May. They were most anxious to master Shakespeare, Byron, and Wordsworth in that time. I had no desire to teach Wordsworth and Byron to anyone, and I wished to protect Shakespeare from them. I decided to lecture on the most rudimentary forms of literature possible. I chose the primitive ballad and its development into epic and the drama. I thought that this would at least teach them the meaning of the simpler literary terms. But English was not easy for them, though they had learned it for eight years or so in the schools. Nobody, for instance, when I spoke of a ballad-maker singing to his harp, knew what a harp was. I told them it was what King David played upon, and drew a picture of it on the blackboard; at which they shouted out: ‘O, _anur_.’ But they thought it beneath their dignity to admit the existence of ballads in Egypt; though I had myself seen the communal ballad-group in action at the hind legs of the Sphinx, where a gang of fellaheen was clearing away the sand. One of the gang was a chanty-man: his whole job was to keep the others moving. The fellaheen did not exist for the students; they thought of them as animals. They were most anxious to be given printed notes of my