we followed the climbing hairpin turns, which opened upon sites of arresting beauty. Debbas had undertaken a number of reforms, and he was planning them in every domain. Politics, and its snares laid by men more powerful than he, hobbled him. "The problem is not a want of competence," he confided to me, "and we do not lack men" — but it was imposed upon him to balance out favors.

"Ah! if only the emigrants came back to us," he would sigh.

I urged him to more daring. He smiled without answering. It was plain that he was not free.

This letter, Cousin, does not aim at history, still less at sterile criticism. It is to lay bare my roots to you.

Time has passed. Lebanon today is free, and its liberty is seven years old. That is young for a people which, like Lazarus, did not leave its infirmities behind in the tomb. What is more, my Lazarus was straightway betrayed. His most powerful godfathers — the very ones who tenderly named him "the Benjamin of our constitutions" — have set wolves at his frontier.

Do I today regret my return to the fold?

The ideal that animated the Lebanese emigrants — contaminated by the materialism of the scientific countries — has deserted them. We are overcrowded with Palestinian refugees. In winter they shiver under the snow in the precarious shelter of wretched tents. The horde of all the unhappy Jews flung upon narrow Palestine refuses their repatriation. All-powerful allies second the rape, which threatens our security as well. Shall I now cut my Lebanese roots, my cousin!

For it is not only to breathe your Lebanese mornings, nor merely to hear the silence of your summits, that my roots will hold. Saints thirty years dead are waking, and by prodigies they command me to persevere. Through them a grace has fallen to me. I have seen and heard the little children of Lebanon.

Their games consist in adorning the mountain with "squares" as in Great Britain, with church fronts like Amiens, and with forts whose defense they contend for among themselves. How could I give up?

Foot by foot, and with their own hands, their old grandparents turned, cleared, spaded, and combed the Lebanese earth, which by their care became a garden. Their grandchildren will carry it on.

A million men with hearts as finely tempered will study, sculpt, build, and sing Lebanon so well that it will become, in the Middle East, "THE GARDEN OF PEACE." As in other countries, where it is customary for each to bequeath to his homeland at least a mite, each of us will enrich the beloved patrimony as he can.

Cousin, happiness consists in creating and sowing. The powerful states have no need of us. Come! More than ever our lands are becoming once again the refuge of spirits and the country of miracles. Because we possess neither gold mines nor enriching subterranean beds, the gods have loved us and the saints carry on. You have surely heard of the one who today restores hearing to the deaf and sight to the blind. Like those miraculously healed, Lebanon has its reason for being, its mission of peace and love to fulfill. And it will fulfill it by the grace of God!.. Ah, come!