in Lebanon, and of the measures being taken in government and cultural circles to make this great world conference unique of its kind, “The Woman's Voice” thinks it well to acquaint its readers with something about this great cultural organization.

1 — The Origins of UNESCO

In 1931 Léon Bourgeois came before the League of Nations to advocate a cooperation founded on study, publication, and art. Thereupon the League of Nations created an international committee for intellectual cooperation, whose first president was the French philosopher Henri Bergson.

In 1935 an International Bureau of Education was founded in Geneva, supervised by a select group of innovators in this field; the scope of this bureau has widened over the past four years until it has become an international institution comprising 17 nations.

During the late war, between 1942 and 1946, the ministers of education of the Allied governments, at a meeting held in the British capital, took up the question of the revival of education once the war should lay down its burdens. They studied the question of supplying the schools, restoring the libraries and laboratories, tracing the dispersed works of art, and other matters. These studies were continued at the meetings held by the Allied ministers of education.

In the spring of 1945 the French delegation submitted to the San Francisco conference a proposal expressing the views the Allied ministers of education had put forward and the principles that are considered today the foundation of UNESCO. In early November

1945 a conference was held in the city of London under the presidency of Mrs. Ellen Wilkinson, at that time Minister of Education in Britain. At this conference it was decided to establish the United Nations organization for culture, science, and education, called for short UNESCO.

2 — The First General Conference of UNESCO

Forty-seven states took part in this conference, represented by delegates or observers. The conference was also attended by fifty-seven observers who had no right to vote, representing sixty-five private international organizations comprising millions of individuals from various cities.

In November 1947, during the second general conference of UNESCO in Mexico City, it was decided to admit Austria, Italy, and Switzerland to membership.

After the first general conference, Liberia ratified the basic convention and became a member of UNESCO.

At the general conference in Paris, UNESCO approved its budget, which came to $6,950,000.

UNESCO's budget for 1947 amounted to six million dollars, the member states contributing to this budget in proportion to their contribution to the budget

of the United Nations, with a slight increase, since the members of UNESCO are fewer in number than the members of the United Nations. The United States, for its part, provides 44.03% of the entire UNESCO budget.

3 — UNESCO's Work in 1947

UNESCO's program in 1947 comprised four great projects touching most of the fields within UNESCO's competence:

First — assistance toward the revival of education, science, and culture in those member states stricken by the calamities of the late war.

Second — the assistance to be given to the member states, for the villages and the countryside, in the service of fundamental education: this is a vigorous general campaign against illiteracy, aiming to provide more exact educational means in the future and to set a general minimum standard of fundamental education for those long illiterate.

Third — the development and encouragement of international understanding, by organizing experiments in practical studies for educators; by improving school textbooks and educational aids; by studying the kind of teaching that aims to bring about international understanding in the schools of the member states;