... Professor Kamal al-Yaziji, one of the teachers of the Arabic Department at the American University of Beirut, spent a period in the United States in scholarly study for the doctorate, and during that time he was able to make con-tact with the Lebanese emigrants and to learn the extent of their desire to return to their first home-land. We thank Professor al-Yaziji for favoring "The Woman's Voice" with this engaging and delightful article, in which he speaks of a portion of our people beloved to our hearts — the talk of an aware and confident man who is not swept along by sentiment.

During the year I spent in the United States, I was able to meet many sons of the Arab countries generally, and of the cherished Lebanese homeland in particular. There were gatherings, there were visits, there were invitations, in which affection, open-handedness, and nobility of character appeared in their brightest colors. Were I to set about describing the emigrants' devotion to the visiting compatriot, and their sincere longing for their first homeland and their distant kin, space would close in on me and eloquence would desert me. I shall therefore content myself with saying: the longing of the Lebanese at home for his kinsman abroad is in no way less than the yearning of the emigrant for the Lebanese at home. Indeed, this feeling of theirs passes beyond the relative to the stranger, and beyond the known to the unknown. The emigrant delights in every Lebanese for the fragrance of the first homeland that clings to his garments, just as the resident brightens at everyone who arrives from the lands of exile, for he is a living, speaking message from every emigrant to every resident. I experienced this myself, for in the affection I met with, relatives and strangers stood equal, as did old friends and newly made

acquaintances. What I received, for example, from the great man of wealth Mr. Massoud Hbeika, the gentle man of letters Mr. Farid Njeim, and the gallant and devoted Espiridon Rizk was in no way less than what I met with in the homes of my kinsfolk — the Yaziji, Khoury, Salibi, and Aswad fami-lies — which proved to me that this abounding hospitality toward an

ordinary person was nothing but a symbol of the longing the emigrant harbors for the mother country.

Yet if we sound out the emi-grant on the subject of returning to Lebanon for good, he takes fright, and his thoughts turn toward the fortune he is still gathering with the sweat of his brow and the blood of his heart, and he asks what would become of it in a situation that has not yet attained complete stability in all its aspects. True, the leaders of the nation have, since the blessed era of independence, exerted many efforts to make the emigrants eager to come back with their money and their belongings to their first homeland.

They made ready for the matter: they founded a special ministry for emigration, appointed

capable officials to the project, and sent the ambassadors and consuls ample instructions toward the achievement of this aim. God knows that those entrusted with the matter have spared no effort in publicizing Lebanon and in making the return to Lebanon attractive to the emigrants. But publicity alone is not enough, and confining ourselves to enticement will not bear the fruit we hope for. For the problem is not, at bottom, a simple problem of sentiment, but a highly complicated problem of "interest." The emigrants are of many classes: among them are merchants, work-ers, employees, members of the liberal professions, and the retired, who live on the reserve they saved up in the years of their struggle. All of them look at the "return project" from the angle of interest first of all. There is no escape, this being the case, from taking prac-tical measures of a kind to satisfy sentiment and interest at one and the same time. This is an innocent and sincere word in which we sum up the point of view as it appeared to us among each of these classes:

1 — The Men of Capital

This is the class whose return to the country concerns us first of all, because of the increase in the country's wealth and the broadening of the possibilities of work that would follow from it. Yet not one of them thinks — at the present time — of transferring his business to the country, and that for two principal reasons. The first is worldwide: the instability of the monetary situation among the nations and the multitude of restrictions imposed on the movement of imports and exports. The second is local: the public services' want of further organi-zation, and the pressing need to facilitate transactions and to put affairs of every kind in order. If we accomplish that, many men of means will come back without publicity or enticement.