8

Page 2. JULY 1952 UNESCC

ED ! TOR ! AL OFFICES :UNESCO HOUSE

19, Ave. Kléber, PARIS. 16

Editor-in-Chief : S. M. KOFFLEREnglish edition : R. S. FENTONEDITORS ! French edition : A. LEVENTiSSpanish edition : J. DE BENITO

limp. GEORGES LANG, U. rue Curia !. Pahs.MC. 52T 62 A.

Yearly subscription : $2 ; 10s 6d ; 500French francs. Sales agents are list-ed below. Where none is listed,write to Unesco, 19, avenue Kteber,Paris, 16'.Argentina : Editorial S : ldamericana,

S. A., Alsina 500, Buenos Aires.Associated States of Cambodia, Laos

and Viet-Nam : K. Chantarith, C. C. R.,38, rue Van Vollenhoven, Phnom-Penh.

Australia : H. A. Goddard Ltd., 255 aGeorge Street, Sydney.

Austria : Wilhelm Frick Verlag, 27 Gra-ben, Vienna 1.

Barbados : S. P. C. K. Bookshop (RegionalOffice Caribbean Area), Bwad Street,Bridgetown.

Belgium : Librairie Encyclopedique, 7,rue du Luxembourg, Brussels IV.

Bolivia : Libreria Selecciones, Av. 16 deJuiio216. CasiIIa972. LaPaz.

Brazil : Livraria Agir Editora, RuaMexico 98-B, Caixa postal 3291, Riode Janeiro.

Canada : English speaking : Universityof Toronto Press, Toronto. Frenchspeaking : Centre de publicationsinternationales, 4234, rue de la Roche,Montreal 34.

Ceylon : Lake House Bookshop, TheAssociate Newspapers of Ceylon,Ltd, Colombo 1.

Chile : Libreria Lope de Vega, Moneda924, Santiago de Chile.

Colombia : Emilio Royo Martin, Carrera9a, 1791, Bogota.

Cuba : Unesco, Centro Regional en elHemisferio Occidental, Calle 5,N"306, Vedado, Havana.

Czechoslovakia : Orbis, Narodni 37,Prague I.

Cyprus : Tachydromos, P. O. B. 473,Nicosia

Denmark : Einar Munksgaard Ltd., 6Norregade, Copenhagen, K.

Ecuador : Casa de la Cultura Ecuato-riana, av 6 de diciembre, Casilla 67,Quito.

Egypt : La Renaissance d'Egypte, 9,Adly Pasha st., Cairo.

Finland : Akateeminen Kirjakauppa,2 Keskuskatu, Helsinki.

Formosa : The World Book CompanyLtd., 99, Chung King South Rd., Sec-tion 1, Taipeh.

France : Librairie Universitaire, 26, rueSouffIot. Paris (5').

Germany : Unesco Vertrieb fir Deutsch-land, R. Oldenbourg Munchen.

Greece : Elefthér, mdakis, Librairie In-ternationale, Athens.

Hungary : Kultura, P. O. B. 149, Buda-pest 62.

India. Orient Longmans Ltd, Bombay,Calcutta, Madras : Oxford Book &Stationery Co., Scindia House, NewDelhi. Rajkamal Publications Ltd,Chowpatty Road, Bombay 7.

Indonesia : G. C. T. van Dorp & Co.NV., Djalan Nusantara, 22, Djakarta.

Iraq : McKenzie's Bookshop, Baghdad.Israel : Blumstein's Bookstores Ltd.,

35, Allenby Road, Tel Aviv.Italy : G. C. Sansoni, via Gino Ca-

poni 26, casella postale 552, Flo-rence.

Japan : Maruzen Co, Inc., 6 Tori-Ni-chome, Nihonbashi, Tokyo.

Lebanon : Librairie Universelle, Avenuedes Francis, Beirut.

Luxembourg : Librairie Paul Bruck,50. Grand-Rue.

Malayan Federation and Singapore :Peter Chong and Co., P. O. Box 135,Singapore.

Mexico : Libreria Universitaria, JustoSierra 16, Mexico D. F.

Netherlands : N. V. Martinus Nijhoff,Lange Voorhout 9, The Hague.

New Zealand : South's Book Depot,8 Willis Street, Wellington.

Nigeria : C. M. S. Bookshop, P. O. Box174, Lagos.

Norway : AjS Bokhjornet, Stortingsplass7, Oslo.

Pakistan : Ferozsons Ltd., Karachi,Lahore, Peshawar.

Panama : Agencia International de Pu-blicaciones, Apartado 2. 52.

Peru : Libreria Internacional del Peru,S. A., Giron de la Union, Lima.

Philippines : Philippine Education Co.,Inc., 1104 Castillejos, Quiapo, Manila.

Portugal : Publicacoes Europa-America,Ltda, 4 Rua da Barroca, Lisbon.

Puerto Rico : Pan American Book Co.,San Juan, 12.

Spain : Aguilar S. A. de Ediciones, JuanBravo 38, Madrid.

Sweden : AB. C. E. Fritzes Kungl. Hov-bokhandel, Fredsgatan 2, Stock-holm 16.

Switzerland : French speaking cantons :Librairie de FUniversite. 22-24, rue deRomont, Fribourg. German speakingcantons : Europa Verlag, 5 Rämi-strasse, Zurich.

Syria : Librairie Universelle, Damascus.Tangier : Centre International, 54, rue

du Statut.Thailand : Suksapan Panit, Arkarn 9,

Raj-Demnern Avenue, Bangkok.Turkey : Librairie Hachette, 469 Istiklal

caddesi, Beyoglu, Istanbul.Union of Burma : Burma Educational

Bookshop. 551-3 Merchant Street, P. O.Box 222, Rangoon.

Union of South Africa : Van Schaik'sBookstore, Ltd., P. O. Box 724,Pretoria.

United Kingdom : H. M. Stationery'Office. P. O. Box 569, London, S. E. I.

United States of America : ColumbiaUniversity Press, 2960 Broadway,New York.

Uruguay : Centre de Cooperacion Cien-tifica p'jra la America Latino. Unesco,BulevC'. Artigas 1320. Montevideo.

Yugoslavia : Jugoslavenska Knjiga,]" : : r T :'3 231 B ? : ?-=je.

Except when otherwise started, art-cles appearing in this issue may bereproduced without prior permission,provided aoknowledgement I. given

to the Unesoo COURTIER.

FROM THE UNESCO

NEWSROOM

* France : Secondary schoolchildren inBrest have just marked the first anni-versary of their Unesco Club with acelebration devoted to the principles ofinternational understanding. The chil-dren presented a programme whichincluded Indian dances, Spanish music,a Tchekov comedy, Breton folklore anda Slav dance by Dvorak. Costumes,decor and music were all provided byclub members. During the year, theclub organized lectures, cinema showsand discussions on cultural subjects.Meetings were arranged with similarclubs in England during the Easterholidays. This summer, the youngstersplan to organize trips abroad and towelcome schoolchildren from othercountries visiting Brest. Similar Unescogroups are being set up elsewhere inBrittany, at Morlaix and Quimper, andin other French schools.

* Yugoslavia : An international campfor young people from Austria, WestGermany, Switzerland, France, GreatBritain and the United States of Ame-rica is to be held this summer on theDalmatian coast by the Yugoslav YoungWorkers'Organization.

* Hawaii : Ten thousand Hawaiianschoolchildren are sending letters totheir young Japanese colleagues as partof a campaign for greater internationalunderstanding. This letter-writing driveis sponsored by the Hawaii Chapter andPacific Division of the World Bro-therhood Organization. The letters arebeing delivered by the president of theWorld Brotherhood Week in Honoluluduring a goodwill tour of Japan.

* United Kingdom : The number ofstudents from various British coloniesstudying in the United Kingdom hasincreased from 300 in 1939 to 5, 154 atpresent, according to the Earl of Mun-ster, Under-Secretary at the ColonialOffice. About 1, 200 of the students holdscholarships.

* Finland : For visitors to the Twenty-fifth Olympiad in Helsinki this month,the Finnish Government is providing aninternational art exhibition of a uniquekind. Each country participating in thegames has been asked to send threepaintings, three scultpures and threearchitectural models or drawings dealingwith sports.

* Yugoslavia : Thanks to scholarshipswhich the Yugoslav Government is giv-ing to foreign students, 16 Africansfrom trustee territories and ten Indianswill this year carry out their studies inYugoslavia.

* France : An International Centre ofAdult Education has been established inFrance by Unesco at the Chateau de laBreviere in the Compiegne Forest on theoutskirts of Paris. On June 14 it begana series of international seminars andcourses on the development of workers'education. Several hundred expertsfrom many different countries areexchanging information and comparingexperiences and views on methods ofimproving teaching methods.

* Turkey : An educational film centrehas been established in Turkey throughthe operation of Unesco with the Tur-kish authorities. The production ofeducational films has been started withthe help of the Austrian specialist Pro-fessor Adolf Hubl, and the technicianWalther Stoitzner. In addition to shar-ing other costs, Unesco granted twoshort-term fellowships to Turkish filmworkers for study in Austria with Pro-fessor Hubl.

* International : Twenty-five Dutchworkers, members of the NetherlandsUnion of Building and Wood Workers,have gone from the Lowlands to theAlps to study building projects inSwitzerland as guests of the SwissChristian Feci'eratio'J1 of Building Work-ers. This follows a similar study ofbuilding and housing conditions madeby Swiss trade unionists in the Nether-lands. In each case, the travellingworkers enjoyed the hospitality of therespective unions at Utrecht (Nether-lands), and Lungern (Switzerland), andshared in the home life of their hosts.This exchange was one of 42 which hadbeen arranged under Unesco's plan forgroup travel grants.

* EI Salvador has decided to reduceby half the postage rates on all Sal-vador publications mailed abroad :This includes books, printed music,newspapers and magazines. The go-vernment has also expressed its readi-ness to adhere to the Paris internationalpostal agreement which authorizes thepayment on delivery of suõscriptions toall publications.

* International : A popular scienceexhibition on plastics, new metals andother synthetic materials was organizedby Unesco in Paris last month, prior toits departure for Yugoslavia in October.This is the third science travelling exhi-bition arranged by Unesco in the pastyear. The first on physics and astro-

nomy has been touring Latin Americaand has already been seen by over600, 000 people in six countries. It isnow in Venezuela. The second exhibi-tion"Our Senses and Knowledge of theWorld has been on tour in nineSouth-East Asian countries sinceNovember.

* France : A cortege transported theremains of Louis Braille to the Panthéonin Paris on June 22. Louis Braille, whodied 100 years ago, devised a systemwhereby the blind could read, andFrance is honouring hin by placing hisbody in the resting place for thecountry's great. The work that Braillestarted is continuing around the world,especially under the auspices of theUnesco-sponsored Consultative Com-mittee to the World Braille Council.

* Western Germany : The owner of anews-stand at the Cologne railwaystation has organized literary discussionsevery Wednesday among passengerswaiting for their train. After a difficultstart, his venture is attracting muchattention. Literary personalities takepart in these discussions whose purposeis to make German literature a questionof general public concern.

* InternationaJ : The Kalinga interna-tional annual prize for the best work inthe field of popularization of science hasbeen awarded to Prince Louis de Broglieby Mr. Jaime Torres Bodet, Director-General of Unesco, in a ceremony atUnesco House, Paris. The world-famousFrench scientist, who won the NobelPrize in 1929, was chosen as the firstrecipient of the Kalinga grant of onethousand pounds sterling for his out-standing contributions to popular inter-pretation of science. The ceremonytook place in the presence of Mr. M. B.Patnaik, a leading Indian industrialist,who established the award last yearunder the auspices of Unesco as a meansof focussing attention on the need forgreater understanding and broader useof science for human welfare.

* India. : The application of the tradi-tional arts and crafts of Rajasthan (In-dia) to the various industrial needs oftoday is being studied by the IndianInstitute of Art and Industry. As part ofits campaign to fight the deteriorationor extinction of craftsmanship, the In-stitute plans to prepare a complete dic-tionary of Indian designs and an ency-clopedia of certain Indian crafts.

* Denmark : A Danish library hasextended its service to include the lend-ing of reproductions of paintings by thegreat masters. A borrower, who belongsto the library, can on the presentationof his ordinary card take home and keepfor four weeks copies of works by thegreatest of modern and classic artists.

COUNT STEFANO JACINI

Senator Count Stefano Jacini, amember of the Executive Board ofUnesco, died in Milan, the city of hisbirth, on May 31 at the age of 65.He had been a member since 1948,was chairman from 1950-51 and in1950 was elected president ofUnesco's fifth General Conferenceheld in Florence. He was well-knownin many countries as a historian,writer, statesman and organizer ofhumanitarian work. In Unesco he wasa stout defender of international aidfor writers and artists and of grantinglarger numbers of fellowships forthem. Emigration problems interestedhim particularly, and for 20 years hetoured Europe to organize aid forItalian emigrants. He was a recogniz-ed authority on the Italian Renais-sance and wrote a seven-volumehistory on this period. In a tribute tohis life's work, Professor PauloCarneiro, chairman of the UnescoExecutive Board, recalled CountJacini's"many years of political andintellectual activity on behalf ofinternational ideals"and the loss thathis death would mean to Unesco and

internotionohsm.

THE bazaars of Baghdad on ahot summer day are not asromantic as some of us may

have been led to think. There iscolour enough, it is true. Vendorsmove leisurely about selling theirgay and exotic wares. The costumesand the strange music weave muchthe kind of spell the average touristexpects. But it is really poor stuffcompared to the glory and glamourwhich once belonged to this part ofthe world.

For in its heyday, this regionwas the centre of a great civilizationand power. Some 70 miles to thesouth lay the ancient city ofBabylon, with its magnificent imper-ial palace, its priceless art treasuresand the famous Hanging Gardenssaid to have been one of the SevenWonders of the World. Somewhereto the south of here, too, is reputedto have been the Garden of Eden-the cradle of mankind.

Once, the whole region betweenthe Tigris and Euphrates was rich,green and productive. A system ofcanals carried water wherever itwas needed. At the height of itsglory, Babylon was even called the"granary of the world". But thereis little evidence of it now.

Today the canals are gone-broken, destroyed and buriedbeneath the advancing sands. Therich alluvial soil has drifted away,carried off by the hot winds blowingup from the Persian Gulf and byevery other wind that blows. Nowthe desert presses in on all sides.

There is nothing unusual aboutthis. The same story could be told

: . ; COURIER JULY 1952, Page 3

in Syria, which holds some of thegrandest ruins of the ancient worldsuch as Baalbeck and the graveyardof a"Hundred Dead Cities", anarea of about 1, 000, 000 acres lyingbetween Aleppo, Antioch and Hama.

It could be told in the Lebanon,where the Forests of the Cedarsretreated before axe, fire, hoe andthe voracious black-eared goat, untiltoday only a few remnants of thefamous extensive forest are left.

The same story could be told inEgypt and indeed wall over theMiddle East, in India, in China, inNorth Africa and in the New World.It happens everywhere that mentake from the soil and fail to replacethe vegetation that binds the soil,or where the water is allowed torush indisciplined across the land.

As Dr. W. C. Lowdermilk, landerosion consultant of the U. N. Foodand Agriculture Organization hassaid, the problem is not so much oneof conquest of natural deserts as ofreconquest of man-made desertsthat have resulted from neglect andmisuse, where"the recklessness,ignorance and hunger-drive of manhave supplemented the process ofwind and water erosion in destroy-ing vegetation and soils, resultingill regional suicide."

"Mankind has strode across theface of the earth for 7, 000 years,"Dr. Lowdermilk adds,"reapingwhere he has not planted anddestroying what he has not made.In occupying new lands one afterthe other, one section of mankindhas looted his fellows and'skimmedoff the cream'and left thin milk forgenerations that follow. Man has

tended to destroy the sources of hisexistence."

Thus, ancient Cyrenaica used toproduce three harvests a year ;today it is largely unproductive, InAustralia, the semi-desert areasare creeping forward and engulfingthe good land because of theoverstocking of cattle and deforesta-tion. Every year, rivers in SouthAfrica and Latin America carrymillions of tons of top-soil into thesea ; one can actually watch thesoil being carried away. Throughcareless exploitation in the past,vast areas of formerly good landin the United States have becomeunproductive"dust bowls". InSouth Africa, the situation iscritical because of the mercilessexploitation by farmers and land-owners. And according to conserva-tion authorities, a national catas-trophe due to soil erosion is perhapsmore imminent in South Africathan in any other country.

Today more countries in the worldare confronted with problems causedby aridity than by any othercharacteristic of climate. It isestimated that the arid and semi-arid regions of the world make upmore than a quarter of the landsurface of the globe. There arethe extreme instances-like theCentral Sahara or Libyan deserts,the Takla Makan in northwestChina, or the Rub'Al Khali in SaudiArabia-where practically nothinggrows and where a few nomadssurvive under the most primitiveconditions. Only radical scientificdiscoveries may some day makethese areas productive to man.

But fringing these deserts aresemi-arid areas which, except forshort rainy periods each year, aredry as dust. They support a heavypopulation whose people live only bythe most careful use of the waterand sources of power available.Because of the enormous pressureof increasing population, it is moreurgent than ever before thatthe unproductive lands should bebrought back into the service ofmankind.

It is the same problem whichinspired the prophet to say :"Inthe wilderness shall waters breakout, and streams in the desert. Andthe glowing sands shall become apool, and the thirsty land springs ofwater ; in the habitation of jackalswhere they lay shall be grass withreeds and rushes. And a highwayshall be there..."

The ancient prophets were thewise men of their time. They keptan eye on the community and it wastheir business to see that provisionwas made for the welfare offuture generations. They may havelacked the scientific knowledge ofour days but they had judgment andwisdom.

And now in the 20th century, thecall has gone out again to bringwater to the thirsty ground. Forat a time in history when popula-tions are increasing at the rate ofsome 55, 000 a day, civilization isrunning a race against time andfamine.

The call is being answered,however, with all the resources ofscientific knowledge and engineer-

ing. Governments in many coun-tries are giving the problemhigh priority. But unrelated localattempts to wrest production fromthe dry lands cannot be expected toachieve the best results. This is acase, if ever there was one,for international co-operation andexchange of experience.

At the General Conference ofUnesco at Beirut in 1948, the Indiandelegation put forward a proposalwhich led Unesco to set up anadvisory research committee toguide Unesco's arid zone pro-gramme. This committee consistsof nine scientists from Australia,Egypt, France, Great Britain, India,Israel, Mexico, Peru and the U. A.

The committee saw two majordifficulties today impeding the worldstruggle to make the lands of thearid zones productive : lack of in-formation on what is being done,and insufficient research on the in-ternational level. Unesco thereforeset itself two objectives :

First, to seek out and makeavailable all the experience andexpert knowledge gained from themany experiments and projectscarried out in many parts of theworld.

Second, to help the developmentand expansion of desert researchstations, so that they would devotetime and study to certain problemsaffecting several countries at least.

Each year, Unesco selects a par-ticular field of research for study.The first field chosen, in 1951, waswater-the one problem common

(Continued on next page.)

ARID ZONE

Page 4, JULY 1952 UNESCO

THE MYTH ABOUT THE TROPICS

O ! \LY horses sweat : gentlemenper per·pire and ladies glow.There can never be product-iw life in the Tropics

until humanity emulates thehorse. Bv all scientific indica-tions man is a tronical animal.Physiological tests have hithertofailed to show that the black manis any more suited to life in theheat than the white, yet the myththat the Tropics are no place fora white man and that sojournthere saps the mental and phy-sical energy of men from temper-ate climates still remains. Indefiance of that myth, however,Queensland has been success-fullv settled and there are manyprosperous parts in the southernStates of America which wouldhe rated as"tropical"from theirclimates were they anywhere else.

The term"tropical"has come tohave a psychological rather thana geographical or climatic mean-ing : do people complain more ofTropical Fatigue in Rio de Janeir,)than they do in Bahrein ? Theyought to, if such a thing existed,as Rio is withi. n the Tropics andBahrein outside.

Human laziness is responsiblefor this myth. Man, like otheranimals, produces heat as he livesand the harder he works the moreheat he produces. In warm cli-mates the body's problem is to getrid of this metabolic heat. Todo so, the superficial tissues warmup to the internal temperature ofthe body and blood flows into theskin'so that it becomes flushedand hot. This hot skin radiatesheat to cooler surroundings andnooler air moving over the skintakes up heat from it.

The heat loss by these tworoutes is adequate at first, but itbecomes more difficult as thetemperature rises until at 88° F.,only if a man is naked and in-active can he get rid of his meta-bolic heat ; if it gets warmer histemperature rises and the thirdmechanism for heat loss, theevaporation of sweat, becomesimportant. The sweat glands. beginto produce sweat and as thisevaporates from the'skin it takesup the heat that could not be gotrid of by convection and radiation.

by Dr. W. S. S. LADELL

Anything impeding heat lossbv these two routes will reducethe temperature at which thesweating mechanism comes intoplay ; for example, a poor flow ofair over the skin, or, of course,clothing. Similarly an increase inthe total amount of heat to be lostwin necessitate sweating sooner ;this extra heat may be fromworking muscles-twice as muchheat is produced when strollingat two m. p. h. as when sittingquietly-or it may be acquiredexternally, as by standing in thesun when the heat gained fromsolar radiation may be more thanthat produced by walking at4 m. p. h.

However, by suitable clothing,by keeping out of the sun and inthe breeze, and by not putting upheat production by working, a mancan usuat) y avoid sweaiing, but for1 productive) life in the Tropicsa man must be willing to sweat ;in vast areas of the world thereis poor nutrition caused in part atleast by man's temperamentalunwillingness to do so. The samephysiologically induced lazinessleads to economic difficulties andto dirt and disease and a viciouscircle is set up. It is dirt, diseaseand malnutrition that kills in theTropics, not the climate.

Man's cooling system involvestwo d'stint physiological func-tions. The first concerns theheart and the blood flow throughthe skin bringing the metabolicheat to the surface, and the otherthe production of sweat, the eva-poration of which removes heat.

Tests show that a temper-ate climate man reacts badly towork in heat when he is firsttried out ; the opening up of bloodvessels in the'skin drains bloodfrom other parts so that his heartbegins to race and he may vomitor faint ; sweating is low in start-ing and not profuse. But withtraining the body compensates forthe extra blood vessels to be finedby increasing the amount of blood,so that those dangers pass ; thenhe begins to sweat sooner andmore freely, and thus becomes"acclimatized to heat". Tests on

tropical men. both in Asia andAfrica, have shO\vn,. surprisingly,that the-se men react more likeuntrained temperate climate menthan like"fully acclimatized"in-dividua) s, and with training theyshow the'same changes.

This is because indigenoustropical man rarely works hard inthe heat ; he prefers to take lifequietly, to move slowly and takeno exercise, and to catnap fre-quently ; he avoids sweating andkeeps his agricultural activities tothe minimum, living when possibleas Adam did in Eden. The immi-grant to the Tropics, however, whoworks hard and plays hard be-comes nearly completely acclima-tized, and-thus the paradox thathe is better able to work in theheat than the locally-born.

But then all around him theimmigrant sees the indigenousman cultivating inactivity, sleep-ing when he can and avoidinghard physical work. Surely, theimmigrant asks himself, the localinhabitant must know best ; so hetoo begins to work short hours,and to take a long midday sleepfrom which he arises confusedrather than refreshed to restarthis broken day.

When a man sweats he loseswater which must be replaced.Physiologically it is best to drinkas one sweats, but drinking whenat work is often frowned upon ; soby evening men have substantialwater deficits. Pure water is dullstuff, so the tendency is to makegood the deficiency with moreinteresting alcoholic drinks ;compatriots and friends gathertogether to exchange news andgossip ; nostalgia stimulates moredrinking : so insidiously an immi-grant community becomes mildlybut chronically alcoholic and thusdevelops"Tropical Neurasthenia".Possibly the best tropical settlersare the Moslems who are for-bidden by their religion to touchalcohol. But prohibition is notnecessary, merely the recognitionthat to drink water as one sweatsis natural and desirable, a signnot of weakness, but, of good sense.

The salt tosses in the sweat

must also be made good, otherwisegrave disorders will result. Manneeds half-an-ounce of commonsalt per day and even more in veryhot climates or with strenuouswork. Part of tropical man'sunwillingness to sweat may pos-sibly be an expression of a saltlack or a recognition of the diffi-culty of replacing salt.

Improved living and workingconditions, with or without air-conditioning, will help to reducethe heat load, but the settlercannot avoid the heat of the air.Sweat is only praiseworthy whenit is the outcome of useful effort ;so tractors should be fitted withcanopies, and hats should be wide-brimmed enough to shade thewhole body from the sun.

The way to productive life in theTropics is the same as anywhereelse : eschew sloth. A tropical com-munity must be prepared to workas hard as it would do in a tem-perate climate and no. t be frighten-ed of the heat ; by hard work foodproduction can be increased andindigenous diseases eradicated.

Tropical men must be t1\uglltthat they are not like cattle whocannot sweat well and have to restfor half the day to prevent beingoverheated, even at the risk ofstarving themselves ; men are bornwith sweat glands so that theymay safely work in the heat. Thebrunt of the day's work. must bedone before taking a nap. Letcommunities in these areas deve-lop into fully integrated societies,where isolation and boredom areno longer the lot of every manwhen his day', s work is done, andseparation from wife and familythe rule rather than the. exceptionfor the immigrant.

Recreation must be provided,so that alcohol can revert toits correct role from being a uni-versal hobby to a useful sociallubricant. With a real home lifeand the development of culturalfacilities the brain worker too canplay his part. But the key aboveall is the willingness to sweat, andonly when much sweat has flowedwill a community be able to affordsuch extravagant luxuries asimproving its local climate by air-conditioning...

PUSHING BACK THE FRONTIERS OF THE DESERT

(Continued from"revious"age.)

to all arid and semi-arid areas.Hydrology concerns itself with bothwater on the earth and below it,but less is known about undergroundwater resources than surface water.Scientists do know that there arevast seas of underground water inalmost all areas of the worldincluding deserts, but much isstill to be done on studying theseresources.

Unesco therefore commissionedeight scientists to study and reporton current research on this subject.Last April, an international sympos-ium of scientists met at Ankara,Turkey, to discuss their findings.The results will provide researchworkers with the first comprehen-sive picture of what is being doneto find out how underground waterbehaves, and the possibilities ofusing it effectively in arid zones.

But water is not the only problemor the only answer for the parchedlands of our planet."The signi-ficant characteristic of the aridzone,"said the Indian delegate atUnesco's Beirut Conference in 1948,"is that it is constantly expandingand is sterilizing the adjacent fertileand cultivable areas at a consider-able pace."The search for improv-ed plant species for agriculture tohalt the world's marching sands isone of the most important problems.

That is why Unesco has chosenplant ecology-the relation ofplants to their environment-asthe special arid zone research themefor this year. A group of ten plant

ecologists are surveying this ques-tion and assembling experimentaland research data on promisingspecies and strains which thriveunder dry conditions in one areaand which may be profitablyintroduced into others.

Australia offers an interestingexample of the introduction ofplants native to other areas.Dr. B. T. Dickson, plant physiologistfrom that country, pointed this outat a symposium on desert researchheld in Jerusalem last May underthe auspices of the Research Councilof Israel, in co-operation withUnesco. He made the followingrevealing statement :"Every cereal,vegetable and fruit crop now grownhas been introduced, none isindigenous. So too have been manypasture grasses and legumes, parti-cularly for better rainfall areas.

"One may hear joking referenceto the need to find pasture plantswhich will remain green all theyear round without water, andwhich can be sown from a saddlebag and can establish themselvesreadily. The point is that newplants, to have a bare chance ofestablishment, must be in equili-brium with the environment, inother words, immigrants capable ofready naturalization. To expectmore is to end in frustration."

Unesco is also interested inresearch projects for developingsources of power in arid zones byutilizing wind and solar energy, andwill probably study this questionfully next year.

The U. N. expanded technicalassistance programme for economicdevelopment has provided a largenumber of missions directlyconcerned with the development ofthe arid zone. In the arid MarbialValley of Haiti, the World HealthOrganization and the Food andAgriculture Organization havejoined Unesco in demonstratinghow to improve agricultural andhealth methods, avoid erosion andcare for the soil. In Libya, a jointFAO-Unesco mission is studyingplans for the expansion of the SidiMesri arid zone research station.

The FAO is now engaged in agigantic international battle withdesert locusts. The most dangerousplague of desert locusts for morethan a century has attacked cropsfrom the Nile Delta to India, 1threatening to destroy the wholefood supply of half-a-dozen agricul-tural countries. The locusts havemade a single feeding ground outof extensive areas in FrenchSomaliland, Eritrea, the Sudan,Aden, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Oman,Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, Israel, Iraq,Iran and Pakistan.

To meet this threat, internationalaction has been organized on a scaleunprecedented in peacetime, theFAO reports. From Turkey, Syria,Lbanon, Irak, Saudi Arabia andEgypt aid has come to help save thecrops of Jordan, one of the most'seriously infested lands. India,

Pakistan, U. S. A. and U. S. S. R. havesent insecticides and equipment toIran where more than 200, 000, 000

acres are infested with desert locusteggs.

Reports reach Unesco from allcorners of the earth telling ofnational governments sponsoringprojects to save or reclaim their land.In Cyprus, large-scale erosion hasbeen checked by destroying herds ofwild goats and planting trees on thesteep hillsides. Turkey is establish-ing an institute of hydrology andgeology which will organize researchand teaching on problems of the useof underground water for its semi-arid central region.

Research work on the arid regionsand research stations are beingstrengthened in places as far distantas India and Chile, Australia and theSahara desert. Eight of these havenow been linked up directly withUnesco's programe of research de-velopment. They are in Algeria,Egypt, French West Africa, India,Israel and the United States. Inaddition to co-ordinating their re-search with Unesco, these centreswill accept visiting scientists andfellowship holders in arid zone ques-tions. By also exchanging theirscientists and technicians with otherinstitutions carrying out relatedwork, they will become the nucleusof the first team of internationally-trained arid zone specialists.

By the sharing of engineers andscientific knowledge on an interna-tional scale, all nations have a chanceof turning a world of want into aworld of plenty. For all nations areinterdependent in the fight for foodand life.

COURIER JULY 1952. Page 5

A CITY

RISES ON

DESERT

SANDS :

"IT

A report

by Ritchie CALDERU. N. photographs by Eric Schwab

At Kotri, the massive ramparts of the barragebeing built across the Indus River are risingout of the drab, tawny desert of the Sind.Water from the completed barrage will fertilizea vast desert area and make practicable theconstruction of a model city for 100, 000 people.

FAR out in the desert is the Lower SindBarrage, which is being built across the wide,sluggish Indus.

Standing on top of the massive masonry of oneof the spans, we looked out on a depressing land-scape. Stretching to the horizon was the drab,tawny desert, dead flat except for a few low, table-topped hills, and with practically no vegetationapart from clumps of camel-thorn and a few stuntedtrees. The Indus itself Was at low water, justbranching streams crawling round massive sand-banks.

It took a lot of imagination to see this as a landof flourishing farms and well-cropped fields. Wejust had to take the word of the experts that oneday it would be so. After all, most of what is nowWest Pakistan, including the Punjab, the Land ofthe Five Rivers, was once desert just like this.

The rivers flowed through the Thirstland, with-out slaking its thirst. Then in the past century,great irrigation schemes farther up the Indus-like the Sukkur Barrage, the world's biggest-watered the desert and it blossomed.

That is what can happen to the Lower Sind desertwhen this barrage at Kotri is completed. It is agovernment enterprise using direct labour. It hasthe services of British engineers, but they areemployed directly by Pakistan.

The Pakistani engineers are very proud of thefact that, breaking with a tradition which usedabundant cheap manual labour, they have broughtin the latest modern equipment for barrageconstruction. They took a pride in showing us, forexample, the giant shovel (its arm towers 200 feetabove the bed of the river), which scoops up tonsof earth at a bite-and which walks.

It is like a fantastic Disney cartoon. When itmoves, two enormous flippers lift the giant engine,drop it belly-fist on the ground, lift it again andkeep moving forward, With a curious hoppingmotion.

They showed us the crushers which break up thesandstone rocks for mixing with cement in thepumpcrete machine. This electrically-driven appa-ratus forces the liquid concrete through pipes, likesqueezing tooth-paste out of a tube, and a coupleof men can direct the nozzle of this hose into themasonry casings of the barrage.

But modern engineering has not abolished thepicturesque. Trains of donkeys with panniers picktheir way through the modern machines into themore inaccessible parts of the operation.

The barrage will consist of 445 spans, comparedwith the 665 spans of the Sukkur. Each span is60 feet. It is being built in sections. A great earth-work encloses each section, diverting the river andforming an enormous caisson within which thebuilding goes on.

As each span is completed, a similar earthworkprotects the work on the next span. The first bundis then broken and the river takes that channel.

(Continued on next page.)

1 1 ·

THROUGH

SO U T H-E AS T A S I A

(3)

Page 6. JULY 1952 UNESCO COI

AT WORK IN

THE DESERT

(Continued from previous page)

When is it completed, the barrage,which is not a storage dam but agigantic weir, will divert the waterinto irrigation canals on either sideof the Indus, and will generate elec-tricity.

As a contribution to the develop-ment which will follow the bringingin of water to the desert of the Sind,FAO has provided experts to helpwith the careful soil-analysis andsoil-mapping. They will advise ondrainage and on underground water

This area has not only the dis-advantage of being dry, but the soilis salted. With enough water andproper draining, it should be pos-sible to leach or scour out the salt.

I went into one desert section of10, 000 acres which will be wateredfrom the barrage, and which hasbeen mapped out and the soilclassified with the help of FAO.Some of it was covered by a crustof salt. The soil looked pretty un-healthy to me, but Mr Le Vee, theU. S. soil conservationist of FAOassured me it was not.

To prove it, he took me down toa pit dug in the desert, and showedme a cross section of the soil. Thesepits are desert"classrooms"for Pa-kistan agriculturalists to learn howto sample soil. In the middle of thedesolation was a market garden,where a Sind farmer had used wellwater to wash out the salt, and wasgrowing vegetables which would bea gardener's pride.

But agriculture is only one aspectof what will be possible in this area.Between Kotri and Hyderabad (notto be confused with the state andcity of that name in Central India)they are planning a city of 100, 000people. I suggested it ought to becalled"Unobad", because from theoutset it will be planned and deve-loped with the help of TechnicalAssistance experts.

Originally the scheme was toprovide homes for thousands ofMoslem refugees from India, mostof whom were craftsmen, tradersand artisans. But the PakistanGovernment decided instead tomake it a model city, which wouldhave a cross section of all classes,professions, industries and interests.They asked U. N. Technical As-sistance to provide a social and atown planner, who will both beBritish.

In addition, the InternationalLabour Office is providing expertswho will help in the setting-up ofindustries, organising labour ex-changes, industrial relations andco-operatives, and on technicaltraining.

The World Health Organizationand Unicef are to help on themedical side, and Unesco has beenbrought in on the educational.FAO will play its part in seeing thatthis new city has a proper relation-ship with the agricultural develop-ment of the area.

The city will be the embodiment

AN EXAMPLE OF) NTERNAT) ONAL) SM

Under a six-year, 8800, 000, 000 development programme and with the help of UnitedNations Technical Assistance experts, the seventy-six million people of Pakistanare progressively working their way towards ever-improving standards of living.

of Pakistan's belief in U. N. Tech-nical Assistance. The U. N. technicalmission here is the biggest in theworld. It covers practically thewhole range of the country's in-terests, from economic planning tocottage industries.

Mr. Tom Hibben, * leader of themission, is economic adviser andworks with the Department of Eco-nomic Planning, so that the pro-gramme is related not only to thevast possibilities, but to the imme-diate needs and present capacitiesof the country.

For instance, when one is toldthat Unesco has supplied experts ingeodesy, terrestial magnetism, seis-mology and atmospheric physics, itmay sound academic ; but geodesyand terrestial magnetism are meantfor the training of Pakistanis to dis-cover their still unknown naturalresources.

Baluchistan is in the earth-quake belt, so they want to knowabout seismology. West Pakistan isan arid zone and depends for itswater on rivers which have theirsources outside the country. Soatmospheric physics means the studyof the possibilities of cloud precipi-tation, oar'''artificial raindrop" (seearticle on page 10),

Karachi has a very fine new broad-casting studio and a new radiotransmitter, and it asked Unesco for(and got) an expert in school broad-casting.

Pakistan needs internal air com-munications (and"internal"meanslinking up West Pakistan with EastPakistan, 1, 000 miles away in Ben-gal). So the International CivilAviation Organisation has put inteams of experts to train the Paki-

* Mr. Hibben has since died.-Editor.

stanis in airport traffic control, radioand radar systems and other as-pects of air communications.

The World Health Organizationand Unicef are giving substantialassistance on the medical side, parti-cularly in the development ofmother-and-child health.

ILO is already in the field advis-ing on the setting up of labourexchanges and vocational training.Pakistan needs a lot of trainedtechnicians quickly and wants to beable to move workers to new centresof development. That is only a be-ginning. This year there will be30 ILO experts in Pakistan.

FAO is not only helping with theopening up of new lands, but withanimal disease and (most interest-ing) deep sea fishing.

In East Pakistan, communicationis by water. Over 1, 000, 000, 000 tonsof goods a year are carried throughthe Ganges Delta by boats of onetype or another. There are over30, 000, 000 boats, and the governmenthas asked for technical advice onthe mechanization of craft for EastPakistan.

They have also got internationalexperts to help with the develop-ment of telephone exchanges. Com-munications are poor, but theyare taking modern short cuts. Theyare bringing in experts on ultrahigh frequencies. A chain of U. H. F.radio stations will be strung acrossthe country, providing radio tele-phone links.

Another encouraging sign ofco-operation is the tying in of U. N.experts with schemes. going forwardunder the Colombo Plan.

Pakistan, after partition, founditself desperately short of trainedexperts. It fortunately has the helpof the United Nations in makinggood that shortage.

Pakistani engineers constructing the barrage at Kotri have brought in the latest equipment for the job : giant mechanizedshovels, rock crushers and"pumpcrete"machines which mix the cement and force it into the masonry casings of the barrage.

What is an

Arid Zone ?

EXTIiE ; \IE ARID ZONE : Anarea in which at least 12consecutive months withoutrainfall have been recorded,and in which there is not aregular seasonal rhythm ofrainfall. Aden, at thesouthern end of the RedSea, Thamed near its nor-thern end, and severalplaces along the Egyptiancoast of this sea are amongthe zones which fully com-ply with this rigorous defi-nition. Hurghada, on thewest coast of the Red Sea,had no rainfall duringfour years of observations.In the United States, a fewareas in the Colorado desertand Death Valley also fulfilthese requirements. Thelongest dry period recordedin the U. S. was at Baghdad(California), where duringthe three-year period fromFebruary 1917 to January1920 the total rainfallamounted to a tenth of aninch. Over 23 years, Bagh-dad's mean annual precipi-tation was 2. 28ins.

ARID ZONE : From on agricul-tural point of view, the aridzones are those in whichthe rainfall over a givenpiece of land is not enoughfor crop production.

SEMI-ARID ZONE : Rainfall issufficient for certain typesof crops, and grass is animportant element of thenatural vegetation, unlessovergrazing has replaced itwith brush.

PRECIPITATION : The essen-tial characteristic of an aridzone-and it is the one onwhich all other thingsdepend-is its small rainfall.There is no general rule'indicating just how smallthis must be to place aclimate in the desert orsteppe category. Taking a.specific annual rainfall(such as 13. 8ins as theouter limit of the arid, or29. 5ins as the outer limit ofthe semi-arid) is often mis-leading. A given amountof rainfall which dries upquickly is of less value toplants than the sameamount which evaporatesmore slowly and so can beused by animals over alonger period.

TEMPERATURE : The rightamount of heat, as well asof water, is essential for thegrowth and ripening ofplants. Thus perennialplants are limited in distri-bution by the coldness ofwinter, and annuals by boththe cold season and the hot.While the date flourishes ineven the hottest deserts, thecommon European grainssuch as wheat, rye and oatswill not germinate at tem-peratures over about 85°F.But it is not so much themean monthly temperaturethat affects life as seasonalextremes-and this appliesespecially to the arid zones.The map alongside there-fore indicates the averagefor the. coldest and warmestmonths.

COURIER JULY 1952. Page 7

A third of Mexico andU. S. are arid ; for Ca-nada, figure is a tenth.Most arjd zones of U. S.and Canada resemblethose of Iran, Turkes-tan and Upper Ara-bia. Small area bor-dering Gulf of Call-fornia and parts ofArizona and Californiaresemble hot Saharaclimate. Great Plainsof U. S. and Canada aresimilar in climate tothe Russian steppes.

North. East Brazil'sCaatinga (scrubland)has semi-arid and evengenuine, arid tropicalareas in about latitudeof Somaliland. Two-thirds of Brazil's goatsare found here. NorthVenezuela and Curaçaohave a similar climate.

Patagonia's - stonywindswept dry plateaurises from 30 to 5, 000teet between coast andAndes. Central Andeanplateaus are chilly de-sert linking westernand eastern dry lands.About one-third of theArgentine is arid land.

Atacama is not justworld's driest desert,but paradoxically Chi-le's greatest wealth. Itcontains the only largenitrate deposits (usedfor fertilizers!) andlargest copper ore re-serves in world. Rainwould dissolve nitrate.

DISTRIBUTION OF

ARID CLIMATES

FOR more than 2,000 yearsscientists have been con-cerned with the classifica-

tion and world distribution ofclimates. Of the many classi-fications devised, the one thathas been used the most was de-veloped in the fourth centuryB. C. by Aristotle. His Meteoro-logica divided the earth upinto five zones of latitude cor-responding to three types of cli-mate-tor id, temperate and fri-gid-based n the different in-clination of slant of the sun's

rays at dif nt latitudes. Our

word climate comes from the

Greek klimata, coined out ofthe verb klinein, meaning

"to incline". Much later scien-tists realized that latitude was

not the only basis for climate ;that temperatur does not vary

only because of latitude, andthat such things as rainfall andwind correspond even less to la-titude. By 1879, climate special-ist had broken away from theancient Greek concept, and in1900 a German scientist, W. Kop-pen, made the first attempt at amodern map of world cli tes.Since then, other factors habeen discovered to be equallyimportant, such as the degree towhich rainfall is lost to the landthrough evaporation.

When Unesco's arid zone pro-gramme was set up, one of thefirst things scientists neededwas an accurate, up-to-datemap of the world's dry climates.Dr. Peveril Meigs, chairman ofthe Arid Zone Committee ofthe International GeographicalUnion in Washington, was askedto prepare it. Dr. Meigs's maps,published on this and the fol-lowing pages, are based on themost recent information todayavailable and on the variousfactors which are now studied inconnexion with aridity. Theyrepresent the most accurateworld maps of the arid zonesavailable today. For this issue,the maps have been slightlysimplified for the non-technicalreader, but their essential con-tents remain unaltered.

Deserts have different degreesof dryness. Terms such as arid,desert, semi-arid, semi-desert,and extreme desert are still usedin many ways by many autho-rities. Mr. Meigs found it ne-cessary, therefore, before deli-miting the zones, to define theterms he was going to use toclassify them.

On the opposite page are thedefinitions used by Dr. Meigs forhis classification of extremearid, arid and semi-arid zones,which are shown on the mapsas "E", "A" and "S". The dryclimates are shown to occur infive great regions separatedfrom one another by oceans orby wet equatorial zones. Thelargest is the North Africa andEurasia dry province. The otherdry provinces are the NorthAmerican, the South African,the Australian and the SouthAmerican. In each of these acore of desert, partly surround-ed by semi-arid lands, bordersthe west coasts of the contin-ents and extends inland andtoward the pole.

It is interesting to note thatnarrow strips of coastal desertborder all five of the world'sdry regions. The west coastaldesert-widely found in Northand South Africa, North andSouth America and Australia-is cool for its latitude, and inmany areas is marked by fre-quent fogs from the sea. Theeast coast type, along the RedSea, Gulf of Aden, Persian Gulfand Gulf of Oman, has veryhigh humidities along with in-tense heat.

The Unesco maps are very im-portant for the fight against the

(Continued on next page.)

DISTRIBUTION OF

ARID CLIMATES

(Continued)

desert. First they show the lands involved in the"arid zone"and at the same time suggest some ofthe principal differences and similarities betweendifferent parts of the zone. Here is an example ofhow a scientist can use them.

Suppose an arid zone specialist wants to knowwhat results other areas with a similar environmenthave had with certain new plants or with differentmethods of land development. He can find on themaps the other localities of êhe world which havebroadly similar climates. Having narrowed downhis search to areas of general similarity, he canthen, if he wishes, look into the climatic records ofthe individual regions for more details of tempera-ture and rainfall, as well as, other factors such aswinds, clouds and humidity.

For instance, a scientist in northern Venezuelafinds his climate is classified as Sb33. Looking overthe map, he sees there are similar rainfall andtemperature areas in North-East Brazil, a corner ofEcuador, North Yucatan, near Dakar, parts of EastAfrica, and North-East Australia. If further detail-ed investigations showed these areas to be similarin other respects too, he could safely introduce thesame or similar plants or animals bred in thoseregions with success.

The Unesco map, while useful for general world-wide comparisons, cannot show the numerous localvariations of climate, particularly in mountainousareas where climate differs greatly in short dis-tances. More detailed local maps are still urgentlyneeded on such factors as humidity, cloud, fog,wind intensity and solar radiation, in order to addto science's knowledge of the climate resources ofthe arid zones.

According to a list prepared by the InternationalGeographical Union and revised by the Unesco Ad-visory Committee on Arid Zone Research, the fol-lowing countries have arid and semi-arid areas.Groups I and II list countries in which extreme aridand arid land together comprise more than one-third of the total land area (semi-arid not beingtaken into account). Groups III, IV and V con-tain countries in which extreme arid and arid landtogether comprise less than one-third of total areaand in which semi-arid land has also been takeninto account. Countries are grouped in descendingorder of magnitude of percentages :

I.-Extreme arid and arid totalling 67 per centor more : Spanish North Africa, Egypt, Libya, Aden,Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan,French North Africa, Iraq, Jordan.

II.-Extreme arid and arid totalling from 33 to66 per cent : Somaliland, Iran, Israel, French WestAfrica, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, South-West Africa,Afghanistan, Eritrea, Australia, Chile.

III.-Extreme arid, arid and semi-arid totalling33 per cent or more : Syria, Bechuanaland, Ethio-pia, Kenya, Mongolia, Union of South Africa, Ar-gentina, Mexico, French Equatorial Africa, India,China, Turkey, United States.

IV.-Extreme arid, arid and semi-arid totallingfrom ten to 33 per cent : Spain, Bolivia, Nigeria,Angola, Tanganyika, U. S. S. R., Madagascar, Peru,Mozambique.

V.-Extreme arid, arid and semi-arid totallingless than ten per cent : Southern Rhodesia, Brazil,Cameroons, Canada, Greece, Italy, Lebanon, Domi-nican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Venezuela.

0, From northern Africa across the Middle Eastto India, Pakistan and Mongolia stretches adry belt larger than all the other dry areas ofthe world combined, The great Sahara is theworld's largest single desert. It is madeup not only of the extremely arid stretcheswhere practically nothing grows but also ofarid areas which have some vegetation andanimal life. To the south is the semi-aridtropical belt of the Sudanese Sahel. The eastAfrican offshoot includes the intensely hot"horn"area where Lugh Ferrandi, in ItalianSomaliland, has the highest mean annual tem-perature of any weather station in the world.

f)IThe map shows that most the Middle East isextremely arid or arid. The Mediterraneancoastal area and Iran are characterized by mildor cool winters while northward and eastwardare the vast deserts and steppes of U. S. S. R.,Chinese Turkistan and Mongolia with sub-freezing winters and warm or hot summers.

) The South African dry area consists chiefly ofthe narrow elongated coastal desert of theNamib in South-West Africa and Loanda inPortuguese Angola, as well as the Karroo andKalahari deserts. Two other dry areas, oftenomitted from world climatic maps, are foundin Madagascar and Mozambique. Dry cli-mates with cold winters are not representedin any of the continents south of the equator.

IThe entire island continent of Australia, com-prising just under three million square miles,is dry except for small fringes along the coast.The central one-third of the nation has lessthan ten inches of rain a year and only theperipheral zone (a quarter of the total area)has sufficient rain to grow crops. The semi-arid zone in between is a great grazing area.

n

Ð

o

o

EASTERN HEMISPHERE

ø

0

Page 10. JULY 1952 UNESCO

FRESH WATER

FROM THE SEA

By Maurice GOLDSMITH

THE Dutch people have a great problem. The saltcontent in the water coming from their rivers andunderground is increasing. This is causing diffi-

culties in agriculture, horticulture and in the home.For the past few years, scientific workers in the Nether-

lands have been engaged in research to find an economicmethod of taking the salt out of sea water.

But this problem is not peculiar to the Netherlands. Noris it the only problem about supplies of water. As indus-trialization develops and the standard of living for many ofthe underprivileged rises, so the demands for more freshwater will grow. But the supply is definitely limited.

Many methods have been used over the centuries toincrease water supplies. Water works have ranged fromwell-drilling and cistern-building to the diversion of largerivers, and the construction of vast storage dams. Today,many million acres of otherwise uncultivable land are beingirrigated, and furnish, especially in Asia, the principal foodsupplies for millions of families.

But these methods are concerned basically with ensuringa better use of existing resources. What is urgently neededis a regular supply of good water from new sources. Thatis why eyes are turned longingly to our greatest naturalwater hole-the sea around us.

If we can cause the sea to yield fresh water at ourdemand, then we shall be able to transform the barrenlands Into productive areas for man.

Distillation is the most ancient method of obtaining freshwater from the sea. Aristotle noted that pure water canbe obtained by evaporating sea water ; and St. Basil, in hisfourth homily on Genesis, commented :"Saitors, too, boileven sea water, collecting. the vapour in sponges, to quenchtheir thirst in pressing need."

During the last century, although distilling apparatusbecame comparatively more efficient, it was installed pri-marily on ships and at naval bases. One at Aden, forexample, was the main source of supply of domestic wateruntil the completion of 0 deep well in 1927.

The process is howewer too costly to use for domesticsupply ao town dwellers.

An advanced technique developed in recent years is thatof distilling fresh water by compressing steam. It consistsin heating water to produce steam, which is then mecha-nically compressed. This causes the temperature of thesteam to. be raised, and raises the temperature at which itcondenses into water. The heat produced is used to eva-porate more water.

As long as the pressure is maintained, the process iscontinuous. The fuel that is used is not needed to heat thewater, but to maintain the pressure.

This process of vapour compression distillation was triedout on a large scale during the second world war. Over1, 000, 000 men were supplied with fresh water from seawater on islands in the Pacific. Stills with capacities of1, 000 gallons a day are now manufactured for the process,and one with a daily capacity of 50, 000 gallons is beingmade for use in Bermuda.

At Kuwait, on the Persian Gulf, a plant with a capacityof many thousand gallons a day supplies practically allthe drinking water for this developing oil centre. Thisprocess, however, is basically for use in an emergency,where it is cheaper to make fresh water from sea water thantransport the fresh.

The late President Roosevelt was fascinated by the bri-quettes that were used during the last war by shipwreckedor airwrecked servicemen. These briquettes containedchemicals which could turn sea water into somethingimmediately drinkable.

The basis for this is a method known as ion exchange.It is this process which is used to soften ordinary water andto purify the water entering into the home. The term ionexchange describes exactly what happens in the process.

tons are atoms, single or in groups, that carry an electriccharge. When salts are dissolved in water, they break upinto ions. It is possible to take one kind of ion out of thesolution and to replace it by another kind. In this way, forexample, salt can be removed completely from a solution.But to do this on a large scale has been prohibitivelyexpensive.

Scientists at the Weizmann Institute in Israel claim thatthey have perfected an inexpensive method of purifying theunderground brackish waters by using an adaptation of thischemical approach.

What is stated to be a significant advance in the useof this process is the technique developed by Dr. WalterJuda, of the Harvard Medical School, and his associates.He uses special ion exchange materials. These are manu-factured in the form of membranes, and are continuousfilms of inexpensive synthetic plastics, less than forty-thou-sandths of an inch thick. They are made largely ofcheap coal-tar and petroleum chemicals. The process issimple because there are no moving parts, no artificial heat,and no chemicals except the natural salt.

When a stream of water is fed to a unit using the mem-branes, it emerges in two forms-a fresh-water stream madeup of two-thirds of the original stream and containingpractically none of the salt ; and a. brine stream, containingthe salt and other chemicals :

The fresh water may be used in the home, in industry, andin agriculture. The brine stream may be further treated toyield salt, magnesium or other chemicals obtained fromsea water.

This technique is still in the experimental stage, but ifit fulfils its developmental possibilities it will prove of highsignificance in the revitalization of the arid zones.

Out world

of

Scienèe

COAXING RAN OUT OF

THE CLOUDS

By Dr. Gerald WENDT

To cox from a cloud the rain that greens the fieldsand gives man food was in earlier days a taskfor holy men, because the clouds were beyond

man's reach and could only be touched by divine aid.But the aeroplane has now scaled the clouds andrainmaking has become a science. The tiny dropletsof water that compose the white mist of cloud can bemade to grow into large drops that are too heavy todrift in the sky and must fall to earth.

Cold does it. Pellets of"'dry ice", which is thesolid, frozen form of carbon dioxide and has a temple.rature of 110°F. below zero, are scattered (or"seeded")on a cloud from a plane flying above it. They coolthe air in the cloud, condense the moisture, and thehigh mist turns to rain.

Another method is now being studied which requiresa machine on the ground, preferably on a hill, to makea smoke of microscopic crystals of silver iodide. Thesefloat into the moist air and also induce the drops toform.

These methods are often successful and many mil-lions of dollars are spent each year in efforts to makerain by them. Even when rain is not wanted they aresometimes used to empty a towering thundercloudbefore it can become violent and drop its water as'adestructive downpour or as hard hailstones. In bothways crops have been saved.

But this is not an adequate answer to the problemof getting rain where and when it is needed. It canonly be used when the right kind of cloud formation isdrifting by. But no man can make a cloud, nor can hepush or pull a cloud to the place where he wants rainto fall.

A desert is arid primarily because clouds do not getthere. Instead, the air is dry and the sun burns hotand steadily. If man would bring rain to such anarea, he must learn to bring clouds, and therefore tocontrol the circulation of the atmosphere. This is atpresent an impossible task.

Two great forces are involved which are literallyastronomic. One is the power of the sun to evaporatewater, which is immense in the tropics where the raysof the sun come down vertically, less in the slantingrays of the temperate zones, slight in the arctic zoneswhere the sun shines weakly and nearly sideways fromthe horizon.

Nearly all clouds contain water that came from theocean and most of it from the warm seas. The energyrequired to vaporize the ocean water and lift it intothe sky is enormous.

It takes only about a tenth of an inch of rainfalling over 100 acres to produce 1, 000 tons of water.To vaporize that much water with coal would requiremore heat than is obtainable from 100 tons of thisfuel. A good rain one inch deep would need morethan is obtainable form 6, 400 tons of coal for eachsquare mile.

This energy is obviously beyond man's capacity, atleast until he learns to utilize atomic energy insteadof coal. Yet the sun lifts millions of times thatamount of water into the air from the sea every day.Only the sun can do it.

Once the water is evaporated it is spread over theearth by the circulation of the atmosphere, which is tosay, by winds. The first part of the motion is easyenough to understand, for the moist air of the tropicsrises as it heats in the sunshine because warm air islighter than cold.

But it cannot go upwards for ever. Like a vastfountain, it spills to the north and to the south, pushed

onward by more hot air rising behind it. Thus itflows into the temperate zones, carrying its moisturewith it, both to the north and to the South.

Now the second great astronomical force shapes thecourse of the moving air. The two great currents,northward and southward, do not continue straightnorth or south. The rotation of the earth sends themboth eastward. This is because the motion of the earthat the equator is faster than either to the northor to the south, so that at the north and south polesthe rotation involves no motion at all.

At the equator the earth turns on its axis once a day- 25, 000 miles in 24 hours. The tropic air rotateswith that same speed. But as it moves away from theequator the earth beneath it moves more slowly inmiles per hour. Retaining its momenta, the air seemsto move faster and thus blows eastward. The prevailingwinds, both in the north temperate zone and in thesouth temperate zone, are western. Away from the tropicareas most weather comes from the west for this reason.

But in the tropics, air must flow toward the equatorto replace the rising column. These are the tradewinds, and since they flow southward they are rotatingmore slowly than is the earth at the equator. So theydrift westward as they go south. Thus the tropicaltrade winds blow from the north-east.

There are many local modifications of these generalwinds because of ocean currents, large bodies of warmwater such as the Gulf of Mexico and the Indian Ocean,and mountain ranges. It is these that contributevariety both to the climate and to the day-by-dayweather. It is the winds as modified by these factorsthat determine where the clouds go.

But to condense the clouds into rain requires oneeffect : cooling. Water vapour can remain in warmair indefinitely, but when the temperature goes down,the air can no longer keep the water in vapour form.It condenses, first into tiny drops and then thesegrow into larger drops. A very common cause ofcooling is the rise of a stream of air over a range ofmountains. As the altitude increases, the air cools andif there is enough moisture in the air it falls as rainon the near side of the mountains.

In the temperate regions, where the prevailing windis from the west, it is usually the western side of amountain range that is wet and rainy. On the otherside, the air has been drained of its water, and manyarid zones thus lie just east of the hills. On the otherhand, in the tropic zones where the trade winds carrythe moisture, the wet areas are to the east and north-east of mountains and the dry zones lie beyond. Coolingis also accomplished by cold winds from the arcticregions that often flow under the warm moist air andlift it upwards to bring rains and storm.

These forces-the heat of the sun, the rotation ofthe earth, the cooling of vast masses of atmosphere-are beyond man's control. One possible way to distri-bute rainfall more evenly would be to level down themountains, but even this is beyond man's feeble powers.

In time the mountains will be washed away by therain itself. It has happened many times in the historyof the earth. But it takes millions of years and in thattime new mountain ranges will be raised elsewhere.

So the problems of getting water to the extremelyarid deserts are not likely to be solved by rainmaking.If man wishes to bring water to them it must comefrom the ground or direct from the sea, not from thesky. There is hope, however, of increasing rainfallin the arid and semi-arid areas fringing the world'sdeserts.

) TRIER JULY 1952. Page I I

PAKISTANI SCIENTISTS AND A UNESCO MISSION STUDY THE QUESTION

IS ARTIFICIAL RAIN POSSIBLE IN THE

PARCHED LANDS OF BALUCHISTAN ?

A TRAVELLER passing* through theBaluchistan desert of WestPakistan begins to realize what

scientists mean when thev talk ofthe"problem of the arid zone".Mile after mile, on both sides of theNorth western Railway, there isnothing but cracked ground, tor-tured bv thirst. On the rim of thebowl of desert outside the trainwindows rise up mountains strippedto their very bones, with foothillsre. sembling gravel dumps left by aBrobdingnagian construction crew.

woe had an opportunity to see this"arid zone"at first hand ourselveson a recent trip from Karachi toQuetta, 500 miles to the north andonly 600 miles from the KhyberPass and the Afghanistan frontier.The purpose of the trip was toobtain a glimpse of what theMeteorological Department of theGovernment of Pakistan, with thehelp of a Unesco technical assistancemission, is proposing to do aboutthe weather.

The men who had the answer toour question were MohammedAslam, the 36-year-old director ofthe Meteorological Department, andDr. Edward Fournier d'Albe, a Lon-doner who was sent to Karachi-andsubsequently to Quetta-by Unesco.

In Western Pakistan, Mr. Aslamexplained, meteorQlogists have twodistinct tasks on their hands : thearid zone in Baluchistan wherelittle more than five inches of rainfalls in an average year, and theproblem of river floods in richPunjab in the north which mayause heavy damage. In East Paki-wotan, there is the job of keepingtrack of cyclones which sweep thecountry in the monsoon season,playing havoc with the river naviga-tion upon which much of its econo-mic life depends.

Quetta, in Baluchistan, Mr. Aslamexplained, is a key-point in theMeteorological Department's pro-

By Daniel BEHRMAN

gramme to learn more about whatgoes on in the atmosphere abovePakistan. Part of this programmeconsists of the establishment of achain of stations in six cities totrack thunderstorms by takingbearings on lightning fia. shes. Thesebearings are needed by flood controlauthorities to obtain advance warn-ings of heavy monsoon storms whichmay dump as much as ten inches ofrain in one day upon certainregions.

All in all the Government of Paki-3tan has undertaken what amountsto a nationwide inventory of all itsresources.

This inventory, part of which isbeing conducted by the MeteorologicalDepartment, Mr. Aslam said, hasresulted in the plan to establish ageophysic and atmospheric researchcentre to help survey Pakistan belowthe earth, on the'surface, and in theair. Since April, 1951, an inter-national team of geophysicists re-cruited in Australia, Denmark, Ger-'many and the United Kingdom byUnesco, has been working in Pakistan.

One of these scientists is Dr. Four-nier d'Albe, a pleasant soft-spokenman with a decided coolness towardsnewspaper reporters who, ever'sincehe conducted his first"cloud-seeding"experiments in 1948 in the mountainsof France's Massif Central, havepersisted in calling him a rainmaker.

Strictly speaking, Dr. Fournierd'Albe is a cloud physicist, whichseems a rather ethereal term untilyou realize that his studies may helpsolve the problem of increasingrainfall in this water-starved land.

"Newspapers have a weakness forrainmakers,"he told us sadly."According to some published reports,we're on the verge of turning Balu-chistan into a green and smiling landof vegetable gardens."

Actually. Dr. Fournier d'Albe anda team of Pakistani meteorologistworking at Quetta do not intendto make any"cloud-seeding"experiments for a long time to come.They are more interested in findingout exactlv to what extent suchexperiments can bring permanent

. benefits.

The British physicist explainedthat certain factors involved in rain-fall-such as the thickness, up-draught and water content of clouds- cannot be changed artificially.

However, through"seeding"ofclouds, it is possible for scientists toadd to the air quantities of"conden-sation mlclei,"the tiny particles uponwhich water vapour condenses toform cloud droplets.

The head of the Quetta Meteoro-logical Station, Mr. Ama Lateef, andDr. Fournier d'Albe have begun teststo count these hygroscopic nucleifrom selected points throughoutPakistan, beginning with Quetta.Equipment used is inexpensive andmuch of it i's produced by skilledPakistani instrument makers at theMeteorological Department's work-shop in Karachi.

We were able to watch one ofthese experiments at Quetta whereMr. Lateef and his assistants had setup their instrument, a"cascadeimpactei", outside the meteorologicalstation. For several minutes theimpacter, suspended from a gallows-like stand, fluttered in a steadybreeze with a vacuum pump on oneend sucking in air for sampling (weweren't allowed to smoke during thetest ; no-one was interested in count-ing tobacco particles). Then glassslides, which had collected thesamples, were removed from theinstruments and carefully labelledfor study under the microscope.

Pakistan is interested in countingthe"big"particles-about 1/100theof a millimeter in diameter-inher atmosphere. If the survey showsthat these water-collecting nucleiare not in the air, then it may befeasible to put them in frnm theground on a large scale. And if theyare already there ?

"In that case, we will have learnedthat cloud seeding doesn't have muchchance of success here-and wewill learn the truth at a much lowercost than if we had tried experiment-ing with airplanes for 365 days ayear,"Dr. Fournier d'Albe declared.

Linked with the particle-countingis the photogrammetric study ofcloud behaviour-a form of aerialmapping from th"ground. Thepurpose of this work is to helpanswer the most perplexing questionarising in any rainfall experiments :"Would it have rained anyway ?"

"No-one is'making rain'inPakistan,"Dr. Fournier d'Albe em-phasized,'''But we hope to be able totell the Government exactly whatthe chances are for large-scaleattempts at raising rainfall in thefuture to succeed."

The geophysical research centre atQuetta is still in its beginningsbecause Pakistan has preferred tobuild slowly and soundly. After itsfirst year of operation, the basicpreliminary work has been accom-plished. A site for the centre hasbeen chosen-this itself was noeasy task-certain instruments havebeen procured while others are onorder and, above all, a long-term planof action has been adopted and isnow being put into practice.

Unesco's scientists in the field atKarachi and Quetta have acceleratedthe programme, Pakistani officialsbelieve, and also have made a lastingcontribution by training personnel sothat the work may go on when themission has ended.

With one-third of the vast area of West Pakistan a desert, Pakistan and Unesco have joined forces in a research effort to determine just what the possibilitiesare of increasing rainfall. Dr. Edward Fournier d'Albe (photo right) British physicist sent to Pakistan by Unesco, goes over plan for equipment with an instrument-maker in Karachi. Fish-tailed apparatus (photo ! eft) hanging from gallows-like stand is"cascade impacter"used to collect air samples for analysisby scientists of tiny particles which help form rain. Conducting the experiment is Ama Lateef, director of Pakistan's meteorological station at Quetta.

Page JULY952. UNESCO

WHAT PEOPLE IN DELHI LIKE TO READ

CONTRASTING TASTES OF EAST AND WEST

by Frank M. GARDNERUnesco Consultant, Delhi Public Library ; Borough Librarian, Luton, England

WHO are the potential library readers, and what do they want toread ? What subjects are they interested in ? What are theirdemands for information as <lfainst recreation ? Most import-

tant of all, do they want books at all ?The Delhi Public Library, opened by the Prime Minister of India

last October, and sponsored jointly by the Indian Ministry of Educationand Unesco, is able to give a partial reply to some of these questions.of interest not only to librarians but also to publishers, booksellers andauthors. It can, in the process, also ask a few more. The last(Illeslion. at any rate. will be easily answered. In rust over fourmonths, over 28, 000 books have beenlent for home reading, and over130, 000 people have visited the variousdepartments. The total would havebeen greater if the premises had beenlarger and bookstocks bigger. Seldomcan an experimental institution havemet with such an overwhelming res-ponse.

Answers to other questions arenaturally affected by the availablestock of books, which is still small,but already there are some interestingcontrasts with the public library userin England, and they raise some im-portant problems for the future.

Although the library stock is inthree languages, demand for books inHindi predominates, to the extentof two-thirds of the total. Andalmost two-thirds of these, in turn,are fiction, which is almost the sameproportion as in English libraries. Isthat a good thing or bad ? Withoutexpressing an opinion on the qualityof the novel in Hindi, I should say itis good. Imaginative expression is asure sign of cultural virility, andhaving had my greatest pleasures inlife through reading for entertain-ment, I should be the last to denyothers the same opportunities.

Turning to fact instead of fiction,the Indian library reader has verydifferent tastes from the English one.In Hindi, the most wanted subject isliterature, then sociology, biography,and philosophy, in that order. Fewbooks are borrowed on history, finearts, languages and science, and thedemand for technical books is onlymoderate.

The Delhi Library, only a fewmonths after its inception, is lendingas many books on philosophy as myown library in England, and overhalf as many on sociology, but onlya tenth as many on technical subjects,and less than a fortieth on fine arts.

The interest in philosophy is atribute to India's pre-eminence in thefield, but the interest in sociology isnot so good if it is at the expense ofother subjects. One reason for theunbalance is, of course, the lack ofbooks. One notices in lists of booksfrom Indian publishers and book-sellers a preponderance of works ontheoretical subjects-politics, econo-mics, accountancy, statistics and law.There seems to be more interest inpolitics than people, more in manage-ment than making, more in socialconditions than social life. Thereseen to be few books, indigenouseither by language or by subject, onthe subjects that in England form thebulk of library reading : home-mak-ing, sports, gardening, hobbies, naturestudy, popular science, travel.

Why is this so ? With very inadequate facts to go on, it seemsto me that the educated library reader is at the university level, andmainly interested in pursuing a set course of study. Below that level,the wants of the reader have either not yet been expressed or realizedby publishers, except to some extent in fiction. The cultural oppor-tunities ofl'ered by the public library will become of greater importance.It is necessary that the nature of the problems is realized early in librarydevelopment.

MODEL FOR AN ENTIRE CONTINENT

PEOPLE in many countries are seeking the information, education and enter-P tainment which public libraries offer. This has been demonstrated by theDelhi Public Library, a pilot project begun by the Government of India and

Unesco last October. Since then thousands of readers have used itsservices. If it had not been created, most of these people would have beenunable to obtain the books they need and obviously want. Flocking into thelibrary every day are all sorts of people : rich and poor, educated and thosewho have never been to school, adults and children. All of them are served,but the library staff gives special attention to people with little formaleducation-those who have recently learned to read. They will get even morehelp in the months to come as the library begins a mobile service and expandsits programme of sub-branches in literacy centres. The Delhi Public Libraryis doing a job of serving many people in one city, but there are thousands ofother cities, towns and rural districts which need this kind of service. Unescolacks the funds to help start public libraries in all of these places, but itpoints to the pilot project in Delhi as a model which could be followedelsewhere, especially throughout India and other parts of Asia. In view ofthe success of the Delhi Library, Unesco has decided to set up a similar projectin Latin America., in co-operation with the Government of Colombia.

Photo below shows Pondit Nehru, India's Prime Minister, inspecfinq the De1hi Libraryafter its inauguration last year. Above,"story hour"in the children's department.

English women read more than men

TT ow does the Indian reader use a library ? He uses it very well,probably better than his British counterpart. He certainly returnshis books more promptly, and handles them as carefully. I havepersonally been most impressed by the quietness of readers and theirgeneral behaviour, and have even had the experience of being askedby a reader to talk more quietly to a member of the staff-somethingthat never happened to me in England.

Do they steal more books ? There is no evidence of that as yet,but even in England, after a hundred years of libraries, some people

Another striking contrast is in theage of readers. In England, the pro-portion of the child population usingthe public library is very high, run-ning up to 75 per cent in my owntown. Then it declines sharply aschildren leave school, and the agegroups 15 to 25 are least stronglyrepresented.

Efforts are made to attract ado-lescents to library use through theyouth organizations, but without muchsuccess. In Delhi, no such problemexists. It is obvious to the mostcasual reader that young peoplearound 18 are the public library's mostdevoted users. What they read, andwhat they would like to read, will bean interesting topic for closer studyin the future.

Helping the writers

BUT a library needs books as wellas readers, and children's booksare woefully inadequate, both inquantity and quality. Quantity isa problem that will solve itself asdemand increases, but quality inchildren's books is a recent develop-ment even in the U. S. A. and England.

If children's libraries can estab-lish a firm market for well-printedand well-illustrated books, they wn !do a great service to education in Indiagenerally, and. co-operation here ismost important.

In fact, the problem is a moregeneral one. The potential libraryreaders in India already exist, andwill increase enormously in the nextdecade. I have already mentionedthe new class of readers that willarise. Where will the books comefrom ? In the English language, thenumber of titles in print must bemore than 250, 000, and the annualoutput must be 30, 000 or 40, 000,Although one can make no more thana guess at the availability of Hindititles of books suitable for a publiclibrary, there are probably not morethan 7, 000 to 10, 000, and the annualoutput cannot be over 2, 000, includingpamphlets. Of these many are badlyprinted in unsuitable editions. In thewest, the growth of public librariesfollowed the production of books inquantity. In India, the two thingsmust grow together. Libraries canhave a direct influence on supply bycreating a firm market for suitablebooks.

Here is a new problem for a lib-rary ; net merely to buy the booksfor its readers, but to assist in creat-ing the books themseives by encou-raging authors, publishers and book-sellers to place on the market moreand better works.

If public libraries in India are toplay their full part in democratic

development, they must meet this challenge and turn it into an oppor-tunity. It is an opportunity far greater than that facing the publiclibraries of England a hundred years ago, because the need is moreurgent.

Libraries will naturally assist in the spread of literacy, but literacyis a means not an end. In the use of libraries lie the prizes that arebeyond literacy.

To gain these prizes, certain necessities must be faced, The librarymust be free and open to all. Its purposes must be to inform andentertain, as well as to educate, and readers must be encouraged to usebooks for leisure as well as vocation. And it must be realized that alibrary is a continuing institution. If not allowed to expand it dies,as a plant dies without water. Too many libraries have been estab-lished in India with the best of intentions but with no provision forsustenance, and inevitably they have withered.

To see the readers at the Delhi Public Library, young and old, is asoul-satisfying sight to everyone who believes that books are the prin-cipal agents of true civilization. Behind every one using the librarythere are thousands without such facilities, and preparations must bemade to help them.

still steal what is in fact their own. what misplaced ingenuity I haveseen so far has been mainly devoted to what is in a sense the laudableobjective of acquiring an extra ticket. One method of achieving this,which it would be unwise to disclose, had never occurred to me in25 years of administration, and filled me with unwilling admiration.

One contrast, however, is regrettable. In England, the fairer sexpredominates in the library, even among the staff, and vives get thelibrary books for their husbands. In Delhi, the women are shy, ormaybe they have less time for reading. At any rate, they are compa-ratively rare visitors to the lines of bookshelves.

JULY 1952. Page 13

There is a striking contrast between public library readers in England and India. In the averageEnglish public library (above) women predominate and wives tend to borrow books for their husbands.In India, women are comparatively rare visitors. In English libraries (below) the proportion of childrenis very high, declining sharply as children leave school. The age group between 15 and 25 is leastrepresented. In Delhi, teenagers are a library's most devoted users. (CO ! Photos. British Crown copyright.)

One of Unesco's aims is to encourage the development of public library services for ail peoplewhether they live in cities or rural districts. Delhi's Public Library project will shortly include amobile rural service, It will be similar to the bookmobile (below) in British Columbia, Canada.

ONE WOMAN

STARTED IT ALL

Two years ago the Greek island

of Aegina had no public library.

Today it has. This is largely due

to the initiative of one woman.

by Beatrix COLLlNGHAA1

FIVE minutes'walk up the village street from Aeginaharbour, on a corner to the left, the visitor maynotice an interesting-looking old house standing

back from the road. In the garden of the house, whichwas once the home of John Capodistrias, the first Presi-dent of modern Greece, there stands a new building, smalland plain, of island stone. It is the first modern publiclending library in Greece. And the emphasis is on thewords modern and leading.

Most towns in Greece have a public library. Occa-sionally, as at Salonica, Patras, Corfu and Chios, theyhave very fine ones, but they are only public in the sensethat they are property of the municipality. The mainconcern of the librarian is generally to conserve his books,rather than to facilitate their use. Readers may notborrow, nor are they free to browse amongst the shelves.

It was, I believe, Chios which took the initiative in open-ing a small lending section-but the arrangement isregarded as a conce. ssion, whereas at Aegina the outlook isquite different. You can see that at a glance.

Its bright room-tastefully decorated with picturesand the odd vase of flowers, with shelves arranged accord-ing to the international Dewey system and well sign-posted-is a revolution in Greek library practice.

Entering behind a village boy with the usual close-cropped hair, I was greatly moved at seeing him gothrough the routine of returning his book, taking histicket, choosing one or two volumes, and sitting down tosample a little of each before making up his mind whichto take home. A simple act, but, to my eye, historic.

It all began two years ago. The initiative came from anofficial of the Ministry of Education, Mrs. Peppa Xeflouda,who, since long before the war, had followed with livelyinterest the development of the public library movementthroughout the world.

In 1948, she had an opportunity to see for herself. Asa guest of the British Council, she took a course of studyat the University of London School of Librarianship and,subsequently, with a Unesco Fellowship, visited librariesof many kinds in Britain, France and Scandinavia.

Rural library methods seemed best suited to her country,and on her return home she sought an opportunity toexperiment. The chief obstacle was lack of money, but,even so, much might be done with the existing libraries,given the will.

By 1949, the outlook was encouraging. A GeneralCouncil of Libraries was formed with the object of pro-moting the study of modern methods of librarianship, andshortly afterwards an Act of Parliament authorized theMinister of Education to allocate money for libraries.The amount was small, but the principle was established.

About the same time, a hundred or so librarians fromall over Greece attended a fortnight's course at the UnitedStates Information Service Library. There were usefuldiscussions, and various plans were formulated, but monthswent by and nothing actually happened. Mrs. Xeflouda,however, was not discouraged : she determined to producea working example of a modern library. And her thoughtsturned to her own island home of Aegina.

The mayor, schoolteachers, tradesmen, all kinds ofpeople came forward with offers of help when she madeher plan known. The Ministry of Education also gave itsblessing, and provided money for roof, windows and doorsto be added to a half-completed building left with un-conscious forethought by the Germans.

Old book-cases were found in the town hall and re-modelled like last year's hat. The carpenter who did thisalso constructed a professional-looking periodicals rack,and an issue counter with the right kind of drawers andfittings. The necessary wood was given by the mayor,Mr. Hadzis, and Mrs. Xeflouda presented the cataloguecabinet.

All was ready now for the books. In the circumstances,these had to be donations, and they came from far andwide. Many were the gift of interested people in Aeginaand Athens, including publishers and writers, but inaddition there arrived sizeable contributions from overseasthrough Unesco, notably from the New York PublicLibrary, the CARE Children's Book Fund, the Lord Mayorof London and the British and Foreign Bible Society.

Especially useful was the gift of $50 worth of UnescoBook Coupons, which sufficed to purchase a complete setof Greek classical text. s and a variety of reference books.

Months. of preparatory work had to be done before thepublic could be admitted. Mrs. Xeflouda and the present(unpaid) librarian, Miss Georgia Elia, dealt with thesepreliminaries at weekends, with enthusiastic help from aband of capable boys and girls who labelled and numberedthe books, and even scrubbed the floor in readiness forthe opening ceremony which took place last October.Now the public library is a feature of everyday life inAegina, and its future is assured because the Ministry ofEducation and the General Council of libraries are makinga n ()'u ! i ! r p-ontribution towards its runnins exnenses.

Nor is this the whole story. Access to books quickenscuriosity, and so the suggestion was made quite spon-taneously that classes should be held in the library. Themajority of people wanted first of all to learn someEnglish, so a teacher was found to come and give lessonsevery Sunday morning. Other classes are being planned.

Thus Aegina is demonstrating how a public library canbe not only a store-house of knowledge and ideas, but alsoa power station generating new intellectual activity inthe community it serves.

(This article is reproduced from the Athens News.)

bURIER

Page 14. JULY 1952

UNESCO'S'FREE TRADE IN KNOWLEDGE

PACT COMES INTO FORCE

A few years ago, a well-knownscientist received a letter in-viting him to attend an im-

portant conference in a foreigncountry. He accepted the invitationand a few days later packed hissuitcase and boarded a train forhis destination.

While he was noting down someof the things he hoped to reveal tohis colleagues, his train pulled to ahalt at the frontier.

There, he became so terribly em-broiled in customs formalities overan educational film he had broughtalong that he left it in disgust at thefrontier post !

On May 21 of this year, ten coun-tries agreed that this sort of thingwill no longer happen at their front-iers. On that day, Mr. Trygve Lie,Secretary-General of the United Na-tions, declared :"I hereby proclaimthe entry into force of the UnescoAgreement on the Importation ofEducational, Scientific and CulturalMaterials."

He was presiding at a ceremonyat UN headquarters in New York tomark the first day of operation ofthe Unesco treaty which abolishesimport duties on books and period-icals, works of art, educationalfilms, scientific equipment, articlesfor the blind, and many other ma-terials which are vitally importantfor the educational and scientificprogress of nations.

So far, the treaty affects165, 000, 000 people in 11 countries.It went into force on May 21 whenSweden became the 10th nation toratify the agreement. An addi-tional 19 countries have signed too,and many of their ratifications areexpected in the months ahead (1).

The Times of London has describ-ed the new treaty-which is thefirst to come into operation underUnesco's auspices-as"an admir-able step backwards into a moresensible world."It is a"stepbackwards"in the sense that cus-toms barriers to knowledge are a20th century innovation. A hun-dred years ago, it was quite easy toget books from abroad or send themto other countries. Transport bysailing ships was slower than todaybut free trade was the general rule.Customs officials nearly every-where paid no attention to bookparcels, and educational materialsmoved around the world un-hampered by duties, taxes and otherobstacles. Some governments evenmade special arrangements to makesure that trade in these materialswould not be obstructed. In 1860,for example, the United Kingdomand France signed a treaty provid-ing for free untaxed trade in books.

Then came the First World War.Governments adopted tariffs andlicensing systems to limit trade to"essential"goods and most educa-tional articles suffered. The eco-nomic depression of the 1930'sbrought many new restrictions inthe form of import quotas and cur-rency and export regulations. Withthe Second World War and thebig disruption of shipping, com-merce and industry, came the finalblow to the free trade system.

Educational materials, w h i c hwere needed more than ever before,suffered more than most com-modities. Books, paintings, music,science equipment were caught upin the web of restrictions along withother products. Today, trade res-trictions to knowledge exist every-where.

These were summarized last yearby Unesco in a closely set volume of167 pages entitled Trade Barriers toKnowledge (2). It shows that morethan 50 countries impose duties andan assortment of other taxes on the

by Philip L. SOLJAK

(1) In addition to Sue. : en the ten ori-. q'2nal adherents are : Cambodia, Ceylon,Egypt, Israel, Laos, Monaco, Pakistani,ThuiÚlnd and Yu,/oslavia Viet1Ulm be-came eleventh partidpant'

The 19 countries which have signedbut not yet ratified : A {glwnislan, Bel-'/'/1"'./ !"il'ifl, China, Colombia, Dom/Ì--niclln Republic, Hcuador, HI Salvador,France, Greece, Gua'emala, llaiti, Iran,Lu. l'l'mbol1rg, Se ! herlands, Sew Zealand,PhilipDines, Swit : : erland and the UnitedKinqdJom.

(2) On sale through Unesco SalesA. oen's at $1 ; 6s ; 300 French francis 0/'equivalent.

importation of books. By somestrange logic, certain countries taximported film by the foot, others taxsculpture or paintings or maps bythe pound-like refrigerated beef.Science equipment is taxed as highas 40 per cent of its value.

Trade Barriers to Knowledge re-veals many strange practices. Thus,for example, the customs laws ofCzechoslovakia provide that wood ormetal statues can enter duty-freeprovided they are"not less than lifesize", while stone statues are notsubject to duty if they weigh morethan 11 lbs. In the United States,printed music, maps and chartscan enter duty-free if they are morethan 20 years old. In Iceland, ordi-nary gramophone records pay an 11per cent import tax, but those usedfor foreign language study pay 14per cent-three per cent higher !

Recently, a university professorwrote a letter to Unesco explainingthat because of the new, heavy im-port duties charged by his country,an essential textbook had become soexpensive that his students couldnot afford to buy it any more. Exhi-

import licences and foreign ex-change for books and publicationsrequired by libraries. They alsoagree to speed up and simplifyclearance through customs of allmaterials of an educational, scienti-fic and cultural character.

Unesco is publishing a simply-worded manual to show how thetreaty operates, which will be dis-tributed in participating countries.The treaty works quite easily. Forindividuals, no special formalitiesare needed. A book-seller importsbooks in the same way as he did be-fore but he no longer pays dutiesand some of the other taxes pre-viously charged. To be classified as"recognized", institutions have toobtain approval from their govern-ments.

Here are some specific examples ofwhat the Unesco treaty means forthe student, teacher, artist, scientistand the average person generally inthe eleven countries which haveratified it.

The agreement prevents futureduties from being levied on books,

The Unesco Free Trade Agreement entered into force on May 21 when Mr. SvenGrafstrom (left), Permanent Representative of Sweden to the U. N., depositedhis country's instrument ot ratification. At right is Mr. Trygve Lie, Secretary-General of the United Nations, who presided at ratification ceremony,and with them is Mr. S. Arnaldo, Director of Unesco's New York office.

bitions and collections for schoolslanguish in customs warehouseswhile their sponsors try to raise theheavy bond required by the autho-rities. In another letter to Unesco, amuseum director wrote telling howhe had planned to send a collectionof paintings abroad for a special ex-hibition. Because of the heavy bondasked by the importing country, theexhibition never got past the foreignfrontier.

The treaty abolishes import dutieson the following five categories ofmaterials :1) PUBLICATIONS : books, newspapers,

magazines, music (printed andmanuscript), maps, charts.

2) WORKS OF ART : paintings, sculp-ture, antiques, scientific collec-tions or specimens used by zoolo-gists, anatomists, botanists, mi-neralogists, paleontologists, ar-chaelogists and anthropologists.

3) VISUAL AND AUDITORY MATERIALS :educational films, filmstrips,newsreels, sound recordings, mi-crofilms, slides (if imported byschools, universities, libraries,broadcasting organizations andother recognized institutions).

4) SCIENTIFIC EQUIPMENT : all cate-gories (if imported by laboratoriesand other recognized institu-tions and unavailable domestic-ally.)

5) ARTICLES FOR THE BLIND : all cate-gories.

Governments which have ratifiedthe treaty also undertake to grant

magazines and newspapers in mostcountries where they already enterduty-free. But in Sweden andYugoslavia books will now be cheap-er. A duty amounting to $0. 19 a kilo(2. 2 ibs.) on illustrated books andchildren's picture books will end inSweden. Yugoslavia will abolish im-port duties ranging from $0. 26 to$0. 33 a kilo on books in the Yugoslavlanguages as well as on magazinesand manuscripts.

Swedish school teachers now save$0. 29 a kilo formerly imposed on cer-tain imported maps and charts.The saving on these articles toYugoslav educators runs from $0. 09to $0. 18 a kilogram.

When a 300-metre (980-foot) edu-cational or scientific film enters Pa-kistan, Thailand or Yugoslavia, itis no longer subjected to dutiesamounting to $19. 60, $1. 57 and$1. 12 respectively in these countries.The saving on the same length ofnewsreel is $24. 00 in Ceylon, $19. 60in Pakistan and $28. 56 in Israel.

Research workers and scienceteachers in Pakistan, where scienceis mobilized in a vast national deve-lopment plan, are spared a 30 percent customs levy on importedequipment. Swedish scientists willsave 15 per cent as a result of thetreaty. These duties often ran intohundreds of dollars for a singleinstrument.

Many other groups will benefit.Art importers will no longer pay a35 per cent duty on sculpture in Is-

rael, 30 pe'cent in Pakistan or 45per cent III Ceylon. Life, too, willbecome simpler for Swedish customsofficials who have have had to com-pute the duty on paintings based onthe width of the frame and picturecombined with the total weight.Gramophone record users will nolonger pay 20 per cent duty in Thai-land, 45 per cent in Ceylon and 50per cent in Pakistan. In Ceylon, a27 per cent duty on radio sets forthe blind is abolished.

The Unesco treaty thus constitutesa kind of indirect subsidy to educa-tion, the arts and the sciences. Itmeans that governments have agreedto forego revenues which they havederived in the past from the pocketsof lovers of art, readers of books, orfrom the limited budgets of educa-tional institutions importing essen-tial equipment from abroad.

Most of the revenue derived bygovernments from such duties isrelatively small anyway. As theManchester Guardian has said,"No country would suffer economicdisaster if most of these regulationswere swept away."In reality, nogovernments ever wanted to crippleeducation with its customs laws.They were prepared to drop their

. carriers, but some kind of interna-tional machinery was needed to pro-vide them with a way of doing so.This Unesco has done.

As early as 1946, it assumed theleadership of a campaign to abolishtrade barriers to knowledge. Unes-co's General Conference agreed thatan international treaty, to be adopt-ed by as many nations as possible,was the best answer. In 1949, Unes-co sought the advice of the Contract-ing Parties to the General Agree-ment on Tariffs and Trade whichmet at Annecy, France. Thirty-fourcountries, including 26 Unesco mem-bers, took part in this trade confer-ence which set up a special com-mittee to draft the treaty. The menon this committee succeeded for thefirst time in establishing a commoninternational standard.

The Unesco treaty was opened forsignature in Noverilber 1950. Sincethen, in addition to the eleven coun-tries which have now ratified, 19 na-tions have signed the agreement.Most of them are now seeking rati-fication by their parliaments.

The pact has received widespreadsupport from the world press, fromofficial agencies and voluntarygroups. The Manchester Guardiandeclared that"there is no reason forcriss-crossing the world with bar-riers against the spread of know-ledge,"and urged governments toratify. The UN Economic and SocialCouncil, the Brussels Treaty Powersand the Council of Europe havestressed its importance.

At Uppsala, Sweden, a conferenceof European newspaper editors call-ed on"liberal-minded people in allcountries"to support the treaty.And the New York Times wrote :"Ina world in which freedom of infor-mation has become constantly morerestricted, the United Nations pactis a welcome and encouraging movewhich the United States ought tosupport."

Some 20 international non-govern-mental organizations have also en-dorsed it. The International Fede-ration of Newspaper Editors andPublishers and the InternationalExchange Committee (a free tradebody) have urged their national as-sociations to support ratification. Soalso have the League of Red CrossSocieties and the InternationalCouncil of Women.

When the treaty came into forceon May 21, Unesco's Director-Gen-eral made the following statement :"On behalf of Unesco I congratu-late the first adherents to this inter-national instrument of cultural ex-change, and sincerely trust that theywill soon be jDined by others. Thereadiness of Governments to ratifyand implement the agreement willgive the world fresh proof of theirrefusal to turn geographical front-iers into intellectual barriers. Itwill show that they are determinedto promote that intellectual and mo-ral solidarity of mankind whichstrengthens peace through the com-munion of minds."

UNES

qOURIER JULY 1952. Page 15

The photos on this page show some of the articles which will now enterduty-free in the countries which have ratified Unesco's free trade treaty :

architectural and industrial plans, materials for the blind, geographicalmaps, educational films, scientific equipment, printed music, works of art,

THE BARRIERS

TO FREE TRADE

IN KNOWLEDGE

ARE FALLING

Modern technology has made it possible for books, scientific equipment and othereducational material to move across frontiers on an unprecedented scale. Yet weare worse off now than 60 or 100 years ago, when book parcels could travel unhamperedto almost any country. Since the end of the first World War, thousands of little threadsof complex regulations, tariffs and import taxes have woven themselves into a formidableweb criss-crossing the entire world with barriers to the spread of knowledge betweennations. Today over 50 countries impose custom duties and other trade restrictionson books alone. Scientific equipment, needed in research laboratories, is taxed ashigh as 40 per cent of its value. And by some strange twist of logic certain countriestax imported film by the foot and sculpture by the pound ; others exempt handwrittenmanuscripts but tax typewritten ones ; allow paper-backed crime novels to enter duty-free but tax scientific and technical works if they happen to be bound in leather. Animportant step to break this formidable web-at least in part-was made on May 21,when a treaty sponsored by Unesco entered into force in the first ten countries toratify it. This ends import duty on materials of a scientific and educational characterranging from books, periodicals and works of art to gramophone records, scientificapparatus and articles for the blind. (Story on page 14). COI photo British Crown copyright.