they stand on the brink of the abyss of crime, and that it is our human and social duty to extend a helping hand to them and to hasten to reform those of them who fall, so that each may become a useful member and not a burden upon society.

As for the law, it counts begging and vagrancy among punishable offenses.

In 1897 the Turkish lawgiver forbade begging by anyone capa-ble of work, and the offender was punished with forced labor and imprisonment.

In 1909 vagrancy was prohibited by law, on the principle that whoever does no work despite his ability to work, and takes begging as his trade, is considered a vagrant.

The law likewise punishes the guardians and trustees of a minor, or whoever incites him to vagrancy and begging for his own private gain.

The French Mandate then confirmed these measures taken against beggars and vagrants, introducing certain amendments, notably a heavier penalty for those who incite or exploit juveniles.

In 1944 the Lebanese Penal Code was enacted; it provided for the punishment of beggars and vagrants, and likewise for the punishment of the guardian or trustee, or whoever incites a minor to beg, and it held that any minor under eighteen years of age who leaves the home of his parents or his guardian, or of those entrusted with his care, for a week without lawful excuse, and roams about without work, becomes liable to reform measures.

Yet despite all these wise mea-sures, the beggars and vagrants still fill the streets and sidewalks, with their disheveled hair and their tattered clothes, slipping away with such lightness and

agility that it is hard to catch them. When arrested, they used to be taken to a special depot near the prisons and treated like prisoners, with no work to do.

In 1943 the condition of these wretches troubled the Minister of Health of that day, the late Hikmat Bey Jumblatt, who entrusted their care to Father Yaacoub the Capuchin, founder of the congregation of Deir al-Salib, placing at his disposal the Bashbash building at a cost of 100 piasters a day for each person; this allowance was later raised to 150 piasters.

In 1948–1949, on the occasion of the UNESCO conference held in Beirut, the Ministry of Health asked Father Yaacoub to look for a building large enough for a hundred persons, undertaking to pay him 225 piasters a day for each person.

Father Yaacoub rented the Doumani building, and under his care and the attention of the Sisters of the Cross the situation changed: all the wretches, upon arriving at the shelter prepared for them, were sent to the bath, and then their filthy, tattered clothes were exchanged for clean ones. Thus a visitor could walk through the dormitories safe from mosquitoes and vermin. Certain kinds of work were organized, for each according to his aptitudes and capacity.

At the beginning of 1950 Father Yaacoub was relieved of this task, on the claim that it cost the treasury too much, and it was handed over to the Municipality of Beirut, which set aside for them three lodgings among the quarters prepared for pilgrims: one lodging was assigned to the men and boys, the second to the women and girls, and as for the third, one of the guards informed us that it was "set aside for the well-dressed vagrants."

And this shelter was named the health quarantine!

As for how the beggars and vagrants are picked up, and their present condition, here is a small picture of it:

Two municipal policemen make a round of the city streets in a special car, picking up every beggar and non-beggar they come across, recognizing them by their ragged clothes; they seize him and bundle him into their car. Most of the wretches are exposed to this "seizure": whoever among them happens to be passing through Martyrs' Square or the Bab Idriss quarter is shown no mercy, because he exposes the city's reputation to disgrace before the great personages, foreign or national.

And I shall never forget the pain that seized me when I went to this quarantine for the first time: on a rainy day, the cold bitter, the mud filling the road that leads to their lodging. We reached a large, spacious, filthy room whose windows had no glass; the mosquitoes frolicked in it at their ease despite the kerosene poured about. And I saw beggars, two and three together, old and young, sharing a single worn-out cover and shivering with cold.

Twenty men between twenty and eighty,

among them the simple, the feeble-minded, and the imbecile.

Fifteen women of various ages,

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