While the Lebanese spring offers us its fragrant and resplendent orchards, let us take a stroll around the Place de l'Étoile.

It would perhaps be better to speak no more of everything that offends the eyes and the nostrils in the city of Beirut.

And yet one must insist, again and always, without wearying, on the state of one infamous alley, where every shop tenant, as well as the itinerant vendors, take far too many liberties.

An example. — Tripe emptied out in the middle of the roadway and on the steps, where tons of grime have piled up with the years, and where the smell and the sight of refuse of every kind turn the stomach.

The stagnant water of the cheeses in their tenekés, which is emptied out from time to time in front of the shop. The fish that is sprinkled with water, thus forming a slimy, stinking pool in which one wades — in the very center of the city, and a few meters from our finest buildings.

How is such filth tolerated? A mystery!

And yet the Lebanese, whether townsfolk or mountain folk, are clean in their own homes; but the street?

The street does not deserve one's attention. How could bread — spread out to every wind, on a plank often set right on the sidewalk, handled by every hand — fail to sow colibacilli, amoebae, and typhoid?

Which of those gentlemen of our Municipality will go and lose his time in daily inspections of so unglamorous a kind?

Let us admit that they have works of far greater scope to accomplish.

It is here that the role of woman the collaborator appears, in one of the many duties she can take upon herself.

Upon her falls the good keeping of her home, of which she is proud.

She is the refined and energetic mistress of the house, who takes every care to show herself worthy of her family task. Her role as assiduous overseer of the home can extend also to other fields, which we have not the space to enumerate here today.

Why, then, should this woman not have the right and the power to act in the interest of that great house which is the city, if she shows the extent of her capacities, and in accord with the competent authorities who would confer those powers upon her? The men of this country cannot take umbrage at so great a good will.

The Lebanese woman is quite ready to work to see the aspirations of all brought to fulfillment.

Hygiene, Harmony, and Beauty in the Friendly Capital of Lebanon.

cruelly, confessing that the pull of the senses has often made of him a "greater sinner." We are not masters of our thoughts, he adds. One cannot deny André Gide's sincerity. It goes as far as cynicism. He explains it by his Protestant horror of "Comfort" — moral comfort, of course, that is to say, accommodation. He applies himself to understanding everything by speaking of it, even admitting that Claudel should vomit him forth. But, you see, he prefers to be vomited rather than to vomit.

The struggle of these two Titans — "steam-hammer and elf" — is stirring in its pathos.

One cannot help thinking, all the same, that it is vehement and passionate religious virtues like Claudel's that have caused the wars of religion. Charity does not suffice to put out such firebrands.

These few lines are quite superficial and hasty upon a work of which a whole volume would give only a vague idea.