eminence, so that admiration and title alike were at a loss? — M.D.

A — Well said indeed!! For there is no doubt that our thinking on matters profitable to the good of this nation is a duty, and lies within the grip of guidance.

And in your suggestion there is an originality not lacking in welcome novelty: the many groups would press forward to bring out the fertile forces among them and set them in the ranks of the racing first, forming a breakthrough in the paving of life's roads.

May the Ministry of Social Affairs lend this side of things its sympathy — and its adoption.

Q — I went down to the market — every day something takes me down to it, to buy some household needs — and naturally I would move from one shop to another

until my choice fell on what suits my taste and my budget.

And how my skin tightens at all the smoothness of tongue and sweetness of phrasing squandered to lure me into buying whatever is offered me. This one swears by his honor, and that one by his children and his young manhood, that the price he has given me yields him no profit and that he asks it of no one else. And what will you say when all this flattery and cajoling proved false — fraud and deception — and he sold it, I am certain, for less than the price he had given me?

In God's name, what value has all this squandered talk?! And what halo of trust can surround swear-ing by children and by honor?! — Sh.L.

A — I am with you to the furthest limit in this field... There is in it something that wounds the soul —

the emergence of fraud, deception, and dissembling in so many of life's processions; and in it lies the moral deterioration that destroys the very foundations of life, since it carries with it the herald of dissolution and extinction.

Nations are but their morals, so long as they endure...

And the one responsible for this is first the mother, and in the second rank the school, which instills strong morals and free principles, making of them a high ideal in the lives of individuals; for they are then drawn spontaneously to the good example, and firm foundations settle in their inmost selves, strong enough in their solidity against the cheap and the base, so that they neither stumble nor bend.

In truthfulness there is dignity and confidence; in lying, humiliation and disgrace.