Former head of the Department of Arabic at the American University of Beirut. Member of the Arab Academy. Author of a number of literary works, the latest of which is "Literary Trends in the Modern Arab World."

A. 1 — Even if competition

Q. 1 — Do you believe that the abundance of daily newspapers in a small country like Lebanon multiplies the benefit, or diminishes the importance of the reputable newspapers among them?

Q. 2 — What is your view of the fate of education in Lebanon? Will the foreign and private schools keep their precedence in this field?

is necessary for progress and for the survival of the fittest, the abundance of daily newspapers in a country like Lebanon is no proof that the Lebanese need them. There is no doubt that if they were confined to a small number, so that the number of readers of each was multiplied, that would better guarantee their progress and their influence. But how are we to reduce their number and improve their condition? That is a matter requiring extensive study, for which there is no room now.

A. 2 — It cannot be denied that national education in Lebanon has made notable progress and will progress further in the future; but Lebanon — for traditional and economic reasons — will long remain under the influence of Western culture, and that means the foreign institutions will keep their precedence in the field of education. Lebanon will not be able to win this precedence until its political and economic conditions enable it to impose its curriculum on all the institutions within it (with no distinction between foreign and national), and if it can at the same time agree with the Arab states on accepting the principle of the equivalence of diplomas and the open door for their holders, and on collective solidarity in rejecting the diplomas of states that do not recognize the diplomas of the Arab states.

A. 3 — Our students' finding the foreign languages easier, above all English and French, goes back to several causes, among them:

(1) The foreigners' advance in producing textbooks suited to the mentality of pupils in the elementary schools, and our backwardness in this field.

(2) Our teaching of literature in the secondary schools is still traditional and dry. A single glance at the literature books in the official institutions, for example, shows us the vast difference between what is chosen for our students from the literature of our language and what the foreigners choose for their students from their literature — (there is much to be said on this, more than this occasion allows).

(3) We are still falling short in the methods of teaching, above all the teaching of language; and how our young pupils toil at learning rules or memorizing vocabulary that holds nothing but exhaustion and lost time.

(4) The ascendancy of Western culture and Western

civilization has turned all eyes toward the Western languages. If you add to that the foreign institutions' concern with teaching their own languages, even at the expense of the national language, you will see nothing strange in our students' inclination toward a language not their own and their eagerness for a literature not their own.

If we want to make our language beloved to our children, we must attend to sound textbooks for the elementary and secondary institutions, and then to raising the young with a national upbringing that endears to them their history and their literature and fills them with a spirit of respect for themselves and for their patriotism.

A. 4 — In Lebanon this is a problem hard to solve. Its heat during our present century has risen or fallen according to conditions. At the dawn of the century it was intense; then it eased somewhat after the proclamation of the Ottoman Constitution, until the end of the First World War. When the Mandate came, the rules of sectarianism were laid down officially, and it became the basis of government; and because of the Mandate's dominion it did not show its horns openly. At the beginning of the era of independence matters continued to run in their old course. As for today, if we see a certain uneasiness among the communities (I do not call it an increase of fanaticism among the people), it is due to external factors and internal ones. Of the internal, the most important is the feeling of freedom after the passing of the Mandate, and then this collision between Lebanon's traditional position and the attempt to change it. Of the external, some are hidden, which we cannot point to; some are open, and the most evident of these is the recent boycott between Syria and Lebanon and the suspicion and fear it produced in some, and the inclination toward union in others.

If we look at the question from an idealist's viewpoint, we say that the abolition of sectarianism as a basis of government is a duty in Lebanon and elsewhere. But in Lebanon this question calls for a measure of foresight and deliberation, for it cannot be solved at once by mere government legislation. That