that casts over the mind a fog so thick that we can no longer think with calm sobriety, when courage is what we need most in times of trial. But I love always to look toward the side of brightness, and to imagine that what we are pass-ing through is a passing crisis, and that we shall come out of the midst of the fog victorious. There is nothing to fear from crises of the spirit. Yes, they dampen resolve, but they polish the soul; they deaden, but then they create us anew; they sweep away those weak of faith, but they raise up prophets among us. In such crises the human soul has been pressed until it sang immortal poetry, psalms and prayers; and in times of straits were born the treasures of the spiritual heritage that makes life beautiful.

And if I am to wonder, then the wonder is at a man who sees ugli-ness where it has no home, and

hideousness where it has no kin. For Lebanon cannot be a home-land for anything but beauty, and the Lebanese cannot but worship beauty; for his Lebanon, since Lebanon has been Lebanon, has been the playground of legend, the stage of fancy, the home of poetry and beauty. And ugliness and hideousness in all their forms are a denial of Lebanon's beauty and its enchantment.

And if I am to wonder, finally, then the wonder is at a man who sees despair where it has no home, and surrender where it has no kin. Thousands of years ago, at the coming of spring, the ancient Lebanese would cast into the mouth of the Nahr Ibrahim a doll, an effigy of Tammuz, god of love, fertility, and bounty. Then, after three days, they would climb the valley in throngs to the heights of the mountain at Afqa, where they would celebrate the

feast of life's victory over death, the feast of Tammuz's resurrec-tion from the dead. And in one of life's intoxications, in one of its raptures, they would surrender themselves for a time to the exultation of surging, triumphant life. They gave life free rein as an expression of life; and so the feast, in the eyes of early Christianity, was an abomination and a sin — it escaped them that the feast was a clamorous expression of life's victory, of its triumph over death.

A Lebanese cannot be despairing, despondent, resigned. Despair and despondency are a denial of Lebanon's hope and its promise. A Lebanese cannot hold life cheap when his cedars have defied death and his mountains mock it.

Life is beautiful — and more beautiful still is man's struggle against ugliness and hideousness.