Of the addresses collected in this volume, three—­the lectures at the Sorbonne, at the University of Berlin, and at Oxford—­were written during the winter of 1909, before Mr. Roosevelt left the Presidency; a fourth, the Nobel Prize speech, was composed during the hunting trip in Africa, and the original copy, written with indelible pencil on sheets of varying size and texture, and covered with interlineations and corrections, bears all the marks of life in the wilderness.  The Cairo and Guildhall addresses were written and rewritten with great care beforehand.  The remaining three, “Peace and Justice in the Sudan,” “The Colonial Policy of the United States,” and the speech at the University of Cambridge were extemporaneous.  The Cairo and Guildhall speeches are on the same subject, and sprang from the same sources, and although one was delivered at the beginning, and the other at the close of a three months’ journey, they should, in order to be properly understood, be read as one would read two chapters of one work.

When Mr. Roosevelt reached Egypt, he found the country in one of those periods of political unrest and religious fanaticism which have during the last twenty-five years given all Europe many bad quarters of an hour.  Technically a part of the Ottoman Empire and a province of the Sultan of Turkey, Egypt is practically an English protectorate.  During the quarter of a century since the tragic death of General Gordon at Khartum, Egypt has made astonishing progress in prosperity, in the administration of justice, and in political stability.  All Europe recognizes this progress to be the fruit of English control and administration.  At the time of Mr. Roosevelt’s visit, a faction, or party, of native Egyptians, calling themselves Nationalists, had come into somewhat unsavory prominence; they openly urged the expulsion of the English, giving feverish utterance to the cry “Egypt for the Egyptians!” In Egypt, this cry means more than a political antagonism; it means the revival of the ancient and bitter feud between Mohammedanism and Christianity.  It is in effect a cry of “Egypt for the Moslem!” The Nationalist party had by no means succeeded in affecting the entire Moslem population, but it had succeeded in attracting to itself all the adventurers, and lovers of darkness and disorder who cultivate for their own personal gain such movements of national unrest.  The non-Moslem population, European and native, whose ability and intelligence is indicated by the fact that, while they form less than ten per cent. of the inhabitants, they own more than fifty per cent. of the property, were staunch supporters of the English control which the Nationalists wished to overthrow.  The Nationalists, however, appeared to be the only people who were not afraid to talk openly and to take definite steps.  Just before Mr. Roosevelt’s arrival, Boutros Pasha, the Prime Minister, a native Egyptian Christian, and one of the ablest administrative officers that