Controversial Books | Page 437

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.