A rejoinder to Mr. Rafiq Maalouf's article on the profession of letters, entitled: "This Opium!"

Among the problems of literature in this country is that you can hardly hear a single man of letters — when you ask him about his profession, its sorrows, its hard-ships, and its pleasures — without seeing disgust plain upon his lips!

And among its problems, too, is that everything said of it — that it is wearying and grinding; a delicious and poisonous opium; a beautiful, seducing devil; and that, if its practitioner grasps its sacred mission and vows his whole being to it, it impoverishes him and leaves him housebound through the cold nights, the flagstones of his house without so much as a mat... all of it is true beyond dispute.

For literature among us, and in the whole East, "does not feed a man bread"; and yet those who throng upon this greedy, dry-bel-lied scorpion grow more numerous with every morning! Has poverty in our days acquired charm and seduction to such a degree..?

The truth is that in the pursuit of literature there is, for a certain class of people, a pleasure above all pleasure, resembling the pleasure of hashish, of sensual numbness, and of "opium," in Mr. Rafiq Maalouf's phrase... And it is a pleasure which, once it mounts its man, cleaves to him even in his dreams, and clings to his plate and his cup and the face of his wife and his child... Hence it has become clear to the clear-sighted among us — to those whom the pleasure of literature and its infer-nal rapture have not mounted — that the best remedy for the rising generation, seduced by the virgin-

ity of the pen and the gleam of the letter, is that we bar them from

literature by means of science — science alone, which yields sound logical judgment upon things and a development of the ways of life; then will the nation profit by its youth, their profit from their knowledge will increase, and gain

will come to them through its widest gate!"

So says one whose eyelashes have fluttered over letters through long, sleepless nights that knew no drowsing — devouring letters, and being devoured by lights and rhymes...

So says a poet!!

As though science were the whole of life, and as though profit came only through the sciences — or as though life were nothing but profit...

Our land, Rafiq Maalouf, is a poet...

Royal Gelatin

7 kinds of excellent fruit, in a refreshing form

Royal Gelatin

Royal Gelatin Dessert

7 LUSCIOUS FLAVORS

TASTE LIKE FRESH, RIPE FRUIT

A complete food for your children

Try it in your home

And serve it to your guests