cation: the number of years of their schooling, the kind of school and the country in which they studied, the languages they speak, write, and read, and other such details of their way of living, their income and expenditure, their debts, and their occupations... enough to compose a book about every family.

What the author of the study commends is the good welcome the Lebanese gave those charged with the interviews, and their giving of all the information with perfect good grace. As soon as the interviewers finished a single interview, they set about studying the results and laid them before the members of the responsible committee at its meetings; and so on, until the arduous work ended in statistical tables that are correct and very precise. Although they do not cover all the inhabitants of Beirut — particularly the people of Burj Hammoud and Furn al-Shubbak, who were excluded from the study for material reasons — on the whole they indicate the social tendencies of Beirut's inhabitants. Among them, for example: that in Beirut, where the percentage of males exceeds the percentage of females, 55% against 45%, most men marry between the ages of 26 and 30 and women between 16 and 20; and that the Beirutis do not like moving but stay fixed in one place. The statistics show that 44% have not moved from their homes in the last ten years, and that 27% have moved once; that 63% do not go to summer resorts, most of them being merchants and members of the liberal professions; that 80% prefer to work in the city for eco-nomic reasons; that 75% like their present work while 18% do not; and that only 5% go to the village for part of the time to work there.

It was likewise found that 59% of

homes are without gardens; that 4% of Beirut's inhabitants still have no running water in their houses and are deprived of the means of comfort; that 44% are in debt to financial institutions and others; and that they spend little on their own amusement...

These are some of the many figures around which the research turned. The Ministry of Social Affairs takes them as a reference for studying the improvement of

the Beirutis' life, and each of us ought to read them for information and enlightenment...

In the face of this study so rich in material, we are deeply indebted to Professor Churchill, because on the one hand he has furnished the foundations on which reform projects are built, and on the other he has opened the way for students of sociology and specialists to undertake such a study in the future.