The Editor's Corner — On the Tramway Stoppage: "Perhaps You May Dislike a Thing..." — The Government Between the People's Comfort and the Traction Company's Interest — It Is Time Beirut Had Rest from the Tramway

As is my habit, I shall not expand upon the details, of which so much has been said; rather, I observe the facts and draw my conclusions... And the most striking thing I have "discovered" in the tramway's springtime "holiday" is that traffic and movement in the heart of the capital have become easier to a degree we never knew in the era of the "Company" — except on the lines which the Company never "favored" with its tracks, such as Achrafieh and Sanayeh...

So I come to draw the attention of those responsible to the fact that the Company — with all my esteem for the sacrifices of its workers, and my deep concern for the solution of their problems — has eased the movement of traffic more by its "stoppage" than it ever eased it by its "operations"...

Which means that it has failed in its task of securing people's movement in the heart of the capital, after decades of trial, whereas some of the country's own sons, drivers and garage owners, managed to organize and secure those interests in less than no time!... Today a person needs no more than a single minute, at whatever station he pleases, to travel in five minutes from the spot where he stands to wherever he wishes in the capital.

So if the government thinks of solving this problem, or of solving it anew, our plea to it — after it has attended to the condition of the strikers with the utmost affection — is that it not return to a "bargain" between the "comfort" of the people and the "interest" of the Company!...

For the problem, from this side, has solved itself by itself, and traffic has been set in order, praise God, as every man of affairs in Beirut could wish — after its crisis, in the era of the "tramcars," had reached a point that injured commerce, and morals, and health, and lives... and the country's reputation besides! And is there any cause for the sword of "Barkais" to remain suspended over the country's women and men and children, walking the streets of the capital beneath the wire of death and over the rails of death, threatened with catastrophe at every instant, when the advanced cities of the world have cast off this "antique" invention!

There may be concessions that "bind," or laws that "constrain"! But I see neither wisdom nor courage nor sincerity — in this free, constructive era, in the age of science and of progress toward well-being — in clinging to a law or a concession that secures the interest of an individual or a company while injuring the interests of all the people! Above all when the Company itself was the first to breach that concession! Unless, that is, when the agreement between us and it was drawn up, the "clause" securing the country's interest was left out!... We shall return to this subject with greater force...