"Power and individuality" — drawing by Ohanian Hagop of the Armenian High School.

... Despite this state of despair, we are not altogether bankrupt; there are good tidings that greet us from here and from there, and in them a gleam of hope in a brighter future...

We came to know it at the "Eagles' Club" — a modest club in Ras Beirut, whose founding goes back a few years, made up of a handful of university youth who believe in spiritual values — serving them and fostering them, if it is not granted them to march in their train...

And this Eagles' Club, besides organizing family gath-erings at which the young people listen to debates and instructive lectures — literary, poetic, social, and polit-ical... has in recent years taken to holding permanent art exhibitions, to encourage rising artists and to refine people's tastes. These permanent art exhibitions caught the attention of the cultivated class, those to whom it is not given to visit artists in their homes or in their stu-dios; and their patrons were soon streaming to the club on regular visits, repeated every two weeks at the open-ing of the new showing... discovering on each visit new seats of beauty, and talents cutting their way with diffi-culty, opening at times into buds astir with loveliness...

... And everything ran its natural course, until the beginning of last May, when behold, the art exhibition was something new of its kind... something of the

utmost novelty... It was an exhibition of the productions — or the "attempts" — of children under ten, from the various kindergartens of Beirut, and all the drawings were inspired by "the circus."... I went around the exhibition hall seeking out the personalities of these children through their works: here a strong personality that knows what it wants... here confusion and muddle, and there an individual bent toward freedom... here a beautiful clarity, and there a plain disorder in form and in color...

And a great artist who was in my company whispered in my ear: "I attach great importance to this exhibition. It is the best thing this club has done so far..." And under his guidance I set about gathering samples of these naive drawings... to include them with this article...

And as I thank the "Eagles' Club" for adopting the project of "introducing artists to those who ought to know them" — and this is a truly noble work — I appeal to it to redouble its care for these dewy buds, that one day they may become flowers in full bloom, whose beauty dazzles the eyes!

A strong artistic personality — drawing by Sanni Halawani, aged eight and a half, of the Evangelical College for Girls.