UA-R-GC-1914-01-01-1939-01-27_Page-068

4 ) rn*r ~ t) Appendix B. January 1938 REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE SECRETARY to THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES of THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY AT CAIRO Your Secretary went to Egypt with the feeling that he was the repre-sentative of the Trustees with four different commissions to carry out, and as many others as there was time for: 1. Determine in so far as possible whether or not the people of Egypt are going to continue to welcome the work of the American University at Cairo for the next ten to twenty-five years. 2. Re-examine the plan for the development of the suburban prop-erty and discover the points which need careful watching as the plan progresses. 3. Study carefully the University and its personnel and report on the conditions in the various departments, the quality of the work being done, and the progress being made in the direction of the Christian purpose of the University. 4. Interview as many of the College alumni as possible in order to determine whether or not the training given by A.U.C. is fitting its graduates to meet the peculiar problems of present-day Egypt, and also to enumerate some of the places of leadership that have been won by the alumni in Egypt and adjacent lands. Stories continue to come out of the Orient which indicate that the leisurely life still exists in such metropolitan centers as Cairo with its million and a quarter population. President Y atson is the authority for the statement that there are three rules of life in Egypt. First, never do anything today that you can put off until tomorrow. Second, never do anything yourself that you can get a servant to do for you. Third, never do much of anything anyway. Our President has been in the East a good many years but he does not observe these rules himself, nor does he give his visitors a chance to do so. As for your Secretary, he found Egypt anything but a land of leisure and medi-tation for he crammed into three weeks more than most people accomplish in three months. A specimen day was November 29th which started with a half hour con-ference with Mr. Conn, Bursar, and Khalil Effendi Rizk, his assistant. At 9 o'clock Dr. Watson took Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, the new Vice Consul in Cairo, and the Lums on his official tour of Cairo. We visited the Azhar, the House of the Rich Merchant, several mosques, the Baktashi Monastery- on the hill overlooking Cairo, Bab-ez-Zeweilie. Rushing back to the University we were 15 minutes late for an 11:30 appointment with Dr. McClenahan. Together, Dr. McClenahan and I went to call on Taha Hussein, the blind dean of the College of Arts of the Egyptian University where we drank Turkish coffee and had