Nor will the importance of this University be confined to the Orient.  Egypt must necessarily from now on always occupy a similar strategic position as regards the peoples of the Occident, for she sits on one of the highways of the commerce that will flow in ever-increasing volume from Europe to the East.  Those responsible for the management of this University should set before themselves a very high ideal.  Not merely should it stand for the uplifting of all Mohammedan peoples and of all Christians and peoples of other religions who live in Mohammedan lands, but it should also carry its teaching and practice to such perfection as in the end to make it a factor in instructing the Occident.  When a scholar is sufficiently apt, sufficiently sincere and intelligent, he always has before him the opportunity of eventually himself giving aid to the teachers from whom he has received aid.

Now, to make a good beginning towards the definite achievement of these high ends, it is essential that you should command respect and should be absolutely trusted.  Make it felt that you will not tolerate the least little particle of financial crookedness in the raising or expenditure of any money, so that those who wish to give money to this deserving cause may feel entire confidence that their piasters will be well and honestly applied.

In the next place, show the same good faith, wisdom, and sincerity in your educational plans that you do in the financial management of the institution.  Avoid sham and hollow pretence just as you avoid religious, racial, or political bigotry.  You have much to learn from the universities of Europe and of my own land, but there is also in them not a little which it is well to avoid.  Copy what is good in them, but test in a critical spirit whatever you take, so as to be sure that you take only what is wisest and best for yourselves.  More important even than avoiding any mere educational shortcoming is the avoidance of moral shortcoming.  Students are already being sent to Europe to prepare themselves to return as professors.  Such preparation is now essential, for it is of prime importance that the University should be familiar with what is being done in the best universities of Europe and America.  But let the men who are sent be careful to bring back what is fine and good, what is essential to the highest kind of modern progress, and let them avoid what are the mere non-essentials of the present-day civilization, and, above all, the vices of modern civilized nations.  Let these men keep open minds.  It would be a capital blunder to refuse to copy, and thereafter to adapt to your own needs, what has raised the Occident in the scale of power and justice and clean living.  But it would be a no less capital blunder to copy what is cheap or trivial or vicious, or even what is merely wrongheaded.  Let the men who go to Europe feel that they have much to learn and much also to avoid and reject; let them bring back the good and leave behind the discarded evil.