Mr. Roosevelt delivered a remarkably outspoken address at the Egyptian
University on Monday in the presence of the Egyptian Princes, the Ministers and several ex-Ministers, and members of the diplomatic body. Character, he insisted, was far more important than mental subtlety. Substantial educa- tion, whether of an individual or of a people, could only be obtained by a process, not by an act. Self-government was not a matter of a decade or two, but of generations. Furthermore, it was essential to the educational process that it should combine with itself a spirit condemning lawlessness and race hatred. The recent murder of Boutros Psalm had shocked all good men of every nation whose respect was worth having. It was even more a calamity for Egypt than a wrong to an individual. The type of assassin was alien to good citizenship, whether in peace or in war. "Such a man stood on a pinnacle of evil and infamy, and those who apologised for or condoned his act, either by word or deed, directly or indirectly, whether before the deed or after it, occupied the same bad eminence." We are surprised to see a speech so wise and so honourable to the man who made it characterised as an indiscretion by the West- minster Gazette on the ground that Mr. Roosevelt cannot be regarded as a private individual. We should have thought that, to use his own words, "all good men of every nation whose respect was worth having" would welcome the whole- some doctrine which it contains.
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