Sawt al-Mara — page 37

because your wise, precise, understanding views spurred us on, and brought us, in less than a month, from the stage of design to the stage of realization. You said, the day I spoke to you of our project, that it pleased you, and that you have great confidence in the Lebanese working hand and in our girls' ability to work with their intelligence.

You told me that Lebanon's sky and sun and colors incite to artistic creation.

You told me that the Lebanese girl is capable of learning all the arts, and that she can weave like the best workwomen of Europe — and in a shorter time.

And here is Mr. Haroun Roger Caron testifying today that his little workers attained in a single day the mastery of what his pupils over there learned in several days.

The introduction of the tapisserie industry into Lebanon is an important event. This is the first weaving school of its kind to open — with looms like these looms of ours, and with instructors like our instructors, who spent years of their lives in Aubusson until they mastered the art of weaving to this perfection, and wove upon their looms wall tapestries for the greatest and most famous tapestry designers of the world.

Tapisserie weaving throughout the world suffers from a problem that all but threatens to destroy it: the multitude of taxes in Europe and America compels the workers to demand exorbitant wages; in consequence prices rise and selling becomes impossible, and governments rush to the aid of the factories. But financial aid alone does not suffice if there is no market in which to sell. The working hands grow scarce, the factories close their doors, and this beautiful art is destroyed.

In Lebanon, however — where taxes are all but imaginary, where economic and financial policy is sensible, aware, and understanding, and where our country's openness to free monetary exchange removes all the obstacles from which the industry of the West suffers — all this makes us look to the future with confidence, hope, and ease of mind, if these conditions remain as they are. Only a few years will pass before the products of our workshop are in the capitals of the East and in the capitals of Europe and America, in museums and palaces, rivaling the products of the world's most important factories, whether in price or in quality and taste.

At the dawn of history we gave the world the first letter and the first sail. And Lebanon, the homeland of intellectual radiance, can be the homeland of artistic radiance as well.

No one shall lord it over us. The world shall see Lebanon the home of beauty, the home of art and taste.