When nature bestows her favor upon us and we become fathers and mothers, a wave of joy and happiness sweeps over us, and we strive with eagerness and delight to provide everything our child may need in the way of food and clothing. We prepare his meals with our own hands, we take care to outfit him with every kind of garment, and when he passes his fifth year we take him by the hand to school; we rejoice when we hear him sing a piece, or when we sign his report card and witness his tangible progress — all this is a duty and all this is fine, but one of these aspects remains dark, and we have paid it no attention to speak of — namely, national con-sciousness. Most of our children are heedless of it, ignorant of its very essence. And the fault is not theirs, but ours, and it is for us to consider how to save the situation before it is too late.

Let the child love his country and prefer it to every other land. The child must be drawn along by what he hears from those around him — expressions of praise for the natural beauty of this country: its mountains, its snows, its climate, its woods, and its sea... Let the child's attention be called, on every occasion, to the beauty of these natural scenes, and when he grows up, their values and meanings will become dear to his soul and beloved to his heart, never to be exchanged for the best of God's countries.

Let us plant in our children respect for the country's flag and the country's anthem, and let these hold a lofty place in his little heart; for even if, in the eyes of some, they are but the outer husks of patriotism, they are bound to it by a tie, and they have worth and value in the life of childhood.

One afternoon Nabil came back

from one of his outings carrying a Lebanese flag fixed to a long stick, and he gave his sister Sana a small flag, and the two began marching like soldiers, singing the national anthem. This game was the dearest of all games to her. After a while Sana grew tired, so she straddled the stick of her flag, so that the flag went sweeping the ground behind her while she kept on singing, heedless of what she was doing. Nabil turned suddenly, and it horrified him to see the flag being dragged along the ground; he snatched it from his sister, raising it up high, and said: "The flag must never touch the ground, Sana. It must always stay high, like this... You are little, you don't know yet, but listen to what my American friend John told me. He told me that when a flag of theirs grows old and gets torn, they do not throw it away as rags are thrown away; they burn it, so that no one will trample it, as might happen if it were thrown on the road."

This is how the Westerners begin planting the lessons of patriotism in the hearts of their children. And lessons like these, trifling as they are, matter to children and play a part in their simple lives. Here is an incident that shows how this idea is applied in kindergartens:

Issam is a kindergarten child, all liveliness and energy, but a constant nuisance to those around him. The methods of education were of no use with him, and he remained careless, a rebel against the rule. Now the children were accustomed to salute the flag and sing the national anthem every morning before starting their work. So the teacher rose, called Issam, and surprised the children by saying:

"Issam will carry the flag this

morning, and he will behave well all day long. And whenever he deserves this honor, I shall grant it to him without delay."

And Issam carried the flag with pride. That day was for him a hard lesson in willpower, and he triumphed in the end, and went on improving day after day until he became an example to the other children. How many of our schools raise the Lebanese flag, salute it every morning, and regard it with such lofty regard? Do you not agree with me that treating the carrying of the flag as a reward for children is a means of enticement to urge them to better themselves, and that it raises the flag's worth in their eyes, so that they keep for it, deep in their hearts, a meaning worthy of it? And what harm would there be if this custom were adopted in all the kindergartens and primary schools of our country? — in those of them, that is, that are national, for we cannot hope that the atmosphere of the non-national schools will be steeped in this spirit. And so their pupils come out — alas — feeling everything except this national pride.

All of us love to learn foreign languages, and we love to see our children master them as far as they can; but it is not right that our conversation and our family correspondence should be in any language other than Arabic. Most of the pupils in our schools greet one another with "Bon jour" or "Good Morning," and if one of us calls their attention to the greeting "sabah al-khayr" or "marhaba" or "al-salamu alaykum," and to the beauty and music and national pride these greetings carry, they laugh and take our remark for a kind of joke, or for a mark of fanaticism — and that is because national consciousness is missing in them; it never happened that they were taught it in their homes or in most of their schools. This is grievous, lamentable — but it is a standing fact, and we must face it with courage and be wise