Beirut: Farewell to the Arabs
433
Kawoukjy knew he was a beaten man whose claims of victories had proved to be Hitler-size lies. He was petulant and
uncommunicative except to boast of victories to come. When
I asked him of his sojourn in Germany, he said: "Yallah," and
moved off, with a final surly glance, into a waiting car.
Learning that James Wadsworth, then our ambassador to
Iraq, was vacationing near Beirut, I went to see him, in hopes
of finding a clear-cut answer to a question no American official
had been able to answer satisfactorily: "What is U. S. policy
in the Middle East?" I had first had the lame answer in Cairo,
then in Damascus, and later in Beirut. It was: "To keep peace
and stability." In the garden of a beautiful summer home overlooking the magnificent Lebanese mountains, Mr. Wadsworth
provided the most honest answer: "To be perfectly truthful
with you," he said, "we have no policy in the Middle East,
except to go along with conditions as they develop."
I visited our United States Information Service offices, and
came away with the impression that this hard-working unit of
our State Department was doing an exceptionally good job in
Beirut in promoting good will for America—and was more
successful here than in any other Arab country. Our best
propaganda medium in Lebanon was, of course, the American
University, originally established by Protestant missionaries,
and now the country's leading educational institution. A valuable adjunct was the American Hospital. In the field of missionary education an American Protestant leader reported
"considerable success" in "breaking down anti-American prejudices through our schools and hospitals." It seemed to me
that our humanitarian endeavors deserved more active support;
they were reaching the level of the common people. I found
that most of our agencies were ineffective when they used
purely political appeals.
The day before Stefan arrived I interviewed Kamil Mruwi,
a short, energetic, impatient man with a clipped and brittle
manner. Mruwi was editor of the Lebanese newspaper, EI
Hayet.