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as the highest point to which modern Oriental scholarship has attained.  
I received M. Maitre's permission to quote the substance of his talks with me, and I recommend them to the serious consideration of your Committee as being as helpful, in the formative period of our School, as any of the suggestions or comments brought back by me from Europe or the Far East. 
After going over the administration of the French School M. Maitre told me, in confidence, that he regarded our opportunities for service markedly superior to those of the French from the very start, because of the mere geographical superiority of Peking over Hanoi as a headquarters.  It was for purely political and financial reasons that the French School was placed in the French colony, and was obliged to undertake many local problems of languages and cultures peculiar to Indo-China before the staff was free to turn its attention to the larger subjects of Asia.  He congratulated the American School that they would have a larger freedom in their choice of work.
He strongly advised that the headquarters of the School be established outside the Legation Quarter of Peking, because of the gain in independence from association, in the minds of Chinese, with foreign politics, the superior chances for adequate installment [[?]] and future growth and the vastly greater cost of land in an near the foreign quarter; and because the buildings, which would undoubtedly already exist on any site purchased or given to use in the native city, could be easily adapted to our uses.