pavilion" closed... yes, closed — and how we would have loved to see it

flourishing among its brothers, the Arab pavilions! Natural and expected, this publicity for the "Syrian pavilion" and for Syrian goods, for the fair's first and last aim is commercial and economic — and perhaps it is the aim of all fairs! But this does not concern me so much, and I find my eyes ranging in search of the artistic and aesthetic touch, lingering spellbound before the scientific and the industrial...

And I sensed a unanimity of opinion in favor of the "pavilion of People's China" from the purely aesthetic standpoint. Here is fineness of workmanship — in articles of porcelain, wood, ivory, and more — bespeaking an artistic taste of great antiquity and a boundless perfection. In this pavilion you will neither tire nor grow bored.

And you will be amazed as you roam the "pavilion of the Soviet Union," for you stand before a great nation, still unknown to the world, trying to make itself known in the largest possible doses... You will certainly be amazed at the advance of science, industry, agriculture, music, and art.

And you will stop a moment to gaze at the television in the "British and American pavilions." It is the novelty of the century; you have heard much about television, and here is a chance to see it with your own eyes... Inside the two pavilions you will see, behind the glass wall, a miniature model of a studio, and how the transmission of the picture together with the sound takes place — and you will understand some of the technique, if you are a "radio man"...

And every five minutes your ear is caught by the roar of an aircraft in the sky over the fair city — it is the "helicopter," or rather two, one at the American

pavilion and another at the Soviet pavilion, circling once every five minutes in a tour around the city of Damascus. And you may be in luck, having had the wit to put your name down in advance, and so ride the helicopter and taste this sweet aerial experience!

And in the "Dutch pavilion" you will meet girls in Dutch national costume, standing before rounds of cheese, great and small, of every flavor and size... and the idea will please you as it pleased me...

And you may wonder with me why the "Saudi pavilion" was not joined to the "American pavilion"? Because 90% of its exhibits are of American manufacture — models of oil wells and grand modern machinery... And do not gasp, as I gasped, when you see a Saudi guide responsible for one of the corners... fast asleep... on a chair!!

And I do not know with what feeling you will greet the eagerness of certain Syrian painters to paint a full-length likeness of Lenin presiding over the Soviet pavilion! My own heart is wrung with grief for these artists, for I understood the gesture as one of the manifestations of Communist zealotry and fanaticism... You, my

reader, may have another interpretation, and may judge me guilty of thinking ill...

Finally, I can affirm that the third Damascus International Fair met with great success this year... It is enough to note the continuous streaming of the people; and I came to believe in the truth of the figures shown to me. The fair is entered daily by an average of a hundred thousand persons! — or at least that is the figure the counter recorded on Sunday, September 17 — among them twenty thousand Lebanese —

And so, until we meet at the fourth fair, next year.