420 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1953 



wounded. One has but to glance at the daily newspapers to see, for 

 example, the vivid account of an attack by the people living in the 

 village of Kfarse'louan on those living in Jouar-el-Haouz, the upshot 

 of which little differences was three killed and two gravely wounded.* 

 If such events occur in the relatively highly developed towns border- 

 ing the shores of the Mediterranean, it can perhaps be imagined what 

 fierce vendettas can be carried on between tribes of the desert interior. 



Tiny mountain villages such as Dahr do more than merely maintain 

 their numbers; they also create a surplus population for the cities, 

 which grow by accretion from outside, and they send to distant shores 

 migrants whose remittances enable the populations of many other 

 small villages to continue to vegetate and to create a surplus which will 

 in turn migrate, and so on in a continuous cycle. More people would 

 leave Dahr if they could afford to do so, but they have neither the 

 money with which to migrate, nor enough capital to improve their 

 agriculture. Such a situation, while giving the more energetic and 

 alert of the villagers a sense of frustration, is not, unfortunately, 

 reflected in a declining birthrate. The birtlirate remains the same 

 as it was in former times when the infant mortality rate was so high 

 that, in order to maintain the fighting and working strength of the 

 family, and hence of the tribe or village, a large number of births was 

 necessary in each family in order that a few might survive to adult- 

 hood. Thanks to the efficiency of modern public and household health 

 measures, even in a community as primitive — by western standards — as 

 Dahr, a far larger percentage of children than formerly live to grow 

 up. There has been a huge increase of births over deaths. An ade- 

 quate rate of population growth can now be assured without a high 

 birthrate, but changes in folkways do not always keep pace with 

 progress in techniques. The folkways still favor the old-fashioned 

 high birthrate of other days, and so it remains. 



Although much ink has been spilled in poetizing the joys and beauty 

 of the farmer's life, the fact remains that if the returns of his toil — 

 psychic and material — are not sufficient for proper living, the farmer 

 will want to migrate. The people of the Near East have created a 

 complicated cultural milieu within the framework of which they have 

 shown a great deal of ingenuity in adjusting to a relatively harsh 

 physical environment. Their lot can be improved by education — 

 education, however, of a practical type, which will train farmers to 

 keep on farming and to do so by improving their traditional prac- 

 tices. Elementary schools for teaching agricultural techniques as 

 well as the three R's, are needed in the villages, to help the people 

 to help themselves within the framework of their own rural culture. 

 Since the difference between commercial success and failure depends 



♦ L'Orient, Beirut, July 2, 1952. 



