Mr. Roosevelt spoke with
all his characteristic effectiveness of enunciation and gesture. He
was listened to with earnest attention and vigorous applause by a
representative audience of Egyptians and Europeans, of Moslems and
Christians. The address was delivered on the morning of March 28th; in
the afternoon the comment everywhere was, "Why haven't these things
been said in public before?" Of course the criticisms of the extreme
Nationalists were very bitter. Their newspapers, printed in Arabic,
devoted whole pages to denunciations of the speech. They protested to
the university authorities against the presentation of the honorary
degree which was conferred upon Mr. Roosevelt; they called him "a
traitor to the principles of George Washington," and "an advocate of
despotism"; an orator at a Nationalist mass meeting explained that Mr.
Roosevelt's "opposition to political liberty" was due to his Dutch
origin, "for the Dutch, as every one knows, have treated their
colonies more cruelly than any other civilized nation"; one paper
announced that the United States Senate had recorded its disapproval
of the speech by taking away Mr. Roosevelt's pension of five thousand
dollars, in amusing ignorance of the fact that Mr. Roosevelt never had
any pension of any kind whatsoever.
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