In addition to Robert College and the institution at Asyut there is one here at Beirut which is quite as important as either of the others. I refer to the American University of Beirut, founded by Americans in 1863, which has become the Harvard and Yale of the Near East. It has had thousands of graduates, and its doctors and lawyers stand at the heads of their professions in Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Persia, and India. It has more than nine hundred students, all Orientals, representing every part of the Levant.
This institution was founded by Presbyterians, but the instruction is non-sectarian. The faculty has about one hundred and twenty professors, most of them Americans, and it is a thoroughly up-to-date university. It has a medical department which, with its hospitals, treats thousands of patients a year. It has physical, chemical, and other laboratories, a large library, and ethnological and industrial museums devoted to exhibits from Syria and Turkey.
Armenian children begin to make themselves useful at an early age. Centuries of hardships under anti-Christian rulers have made these people resourceful and self-reliant. They are the shrewdest traders of the East
American relief in the Near East takes the practical form of getting the people back to the land, much of which has been devastated by one war after another
During my stay here I have visited the college. It is beautifully located, the buildings being situated on the bluffs south of Beirut and running from them down to the sea. Standing upon the campus, which contains about fifty acres, one faces the glorious Mediterranean, while at his back are the snow-capped mountains of Lebanon with the rich vegetation climbing their slopes. The institution has a gymnasium, tennis courts, and good athletic grounds. Its students play football, baseball, and cricket. They are full of college spirit and have their college papers, their college songs, and their college yell.
The boys have silver cups and other trophies which are contended for by the various athletic teams, and these Persians, Greeks, Syrians, Arabs, Egyptians, Armenians, and Turks are being welded into one brotherhood by the hard knocks of football and the track.
The Beirut University is an American college and a Christian college as well, but it does not attempt to proselytize, and the Moslem can come to it without changing his religion. It insists only that everyone who goes through its courses shall attend chapel and the Bible classes, which study the Bible as one of the great influences in the work of the world. Once the Moslem students struck against these regulations. They refused to go to chapel and took an oath not to attend the Bible classes. The strike created a sensation, and for a time it seemed as though it might do serious damage. The faculty, however, headed by the president, Dr. Howard S. Bliss, stood firm, saying that the school was a Christian college. They demanded that all students attend the religious services, and the result was that most of the strikers came in, and the college has gone along on its original lines.
In talking about this to the Mohammedan students Dr. Bliss said: