UA-R-GC-1914-01-01-1939-11-17_Page-010

Appendix A REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY AT CAIRO TO THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES for the year 193e-39 Gentlemen:- This Report is being written in September 1939 in the atmosphere of tragic world war developments whose significance for the future is beyond computation. It is difficult to detach one's mind from the startling events that are reported in the newspapers from day to day and the grave issue hanging in the balance for the future and address one's thoughts calm1;, to a review of a year of comparative calm and relative quiet that was completed before war broke out. However, it is to be observed tnat we who have lived in Egypt have been living to such a degree in a war atmosphere during the past year that the shock of war has not been so great for us. Indeed tine question has been asked again and again whether war itself could be much worse. With hundreds of sand bags on the roofs of our buildings to provide for dealing with incendiary bombs, with repeated blackout practises by night, with the playing of searchlights night after night in the military practice for locat-ing aeroplanes, with the instalment and equipment of a gas shelter on the University grounds, with the purchase of over a hundred gas masks for staff and servants, with lectures on air raids, with the government's imposition for the first time in Egypt's history of a personal income tax to provide funds for a program of militarization and self-defense, with all these signs cf war, there has been no chance of our forgetting - those of us who lived in Egypt - that war was not merely possible but imminent. Furthermore, as one saw the thinking, the planning, the financial resources and the man power of society claimed by war preparation, all because of one or two men and governments pursuing lawless courses and threatening the peace and liberty of others, the feeling developed that this evil needed to be dealt with even at the price of war, because already it had created practically a situation so fully the equivalent of war that all the creative and constructive processes of civilization were being arrested and their intellectual and finan-cial resources diverted to plans for military self-defense against this ruthless and terrorizing enemy. The year with which this Report deals is therefore that brief breathing space of nominal peace which our world enjoyed between the Munich Conference and the opening of the present war. The political background of our work in Egypt during the past year was the government of Mohammed Mahmud Pasha. My Report a year ago described this administration as not too friendly to Christianity or Christian missions, large-ly because it had come into power by appeal to the fundamentalist elements in Islam and, in consistency, had to pay its bill for political services rendered by that group, by assuming an attitude of hostility to Christianity. In pass-ing, it is to be noted that just last month tine ldinistry fell and a new Ministry headed by Ali Maher Pasha carie to power which has elements much more favorable for our work, if one may base a forecast on the past records of those who now form this new Cabinet. The present Report however deals with events under the administration of Mohammed Mahmud Pasha. 1 To the credit of Mahmud Pasha's Ministry stands a record of administra-tive efficiency. Things got done, where under the previous Ministry of Naha