Yet in this city of schools and colleges, if the stranger tells his coachman to drive to el-Kulliyet—“the College”—he will be taken without question to an institution which is incorporated under the laws of the State of New York; and a short visit here will show why this is acknowledged to be the college of Beirut. Upon a beautifully situated campus of fifty acres, twenty imposing stone buildings house the seven departments of what is really a large, well-equipped university of eighty instructors and nearly a thousand students, with observatory and library and scientific laboratories and hospitals, as well as literary, dramatic, musical and scientific societies and its own printing-press and monthly magazine.
Many important things are being learned and done at the Syrian Protestant College; but what strikes the observant visitor as most admirable of all is the spirit of the institution, a spirit of thoroughness and manliness and loyal fraternity and encouraging optimism. More than anything else in Beirut—yes, more than anything else in western Asia—the “S. P. C.,” as its students and alumni call it, stands for the best gifts of Western civilization and for a new hope which, lighted first in beautiful Syria, is already beginning to shine on many a land far out of sight of heavenward-reaching Lebanon.
CHAPTER IV
THE SPIRIT OF OLYMPIA
Mount Lebanon looks to-day upon such a contest as it has never seen before. Yet Syria has witnessed many struggles. From the time men first began to fight, this land has hardly had opportunity to learn what peace and quiet mean. There are people on the campus of the American College this afternoon who can remember when the slopes of the mountain ran with blood; some of the best sprinters know what it is to flee for their lives, and even this week there has been killing on the streets of Beirut.
The contest to-day, however, is a new thing under the Syrian sun. It is not the first time that athletic games have been held—there was a field-day as far back as 1898—but this time the preparations have been of an unusual character. During the whole week, men have been busy rolling and marking the track and removing every stick and pebble from the football field. The classrooms have been emptied of all their chairs and benches, and the faculty committee has erected four grand stands, seating over a thousand people. These will not begin to accommodate all the spectators, however, and students living in dormitories that front on the athletic field find that they have suddenly become very popular among the ladies of the city.
The football teams have ordered sweaters and shin-guards from England, and the Beirut tailors have been puzzling their brains over queerly shaped garments for the sprinters. The medals on exhibition in the college library were struck in Boston especially for this occasion, and bear on their faces the college emblem, a cedar of Lebanon. Besides the prizes for each event, the American consul will give a gold medal to the champion all-round athlete. Best of all, the governor of Lebanon has promised to attend and has sent his famous military band to provide the afternoon’s music. When to these various good things is added the glory of a Syrian springtime, and a campus set high on a bluff overlooking the blue Mediterranean, with Mount Lebanon raising its snow-capped summits high in the background, it is an occasion and a setting to quicken the slowest pulse.
To-day is so full of excitement, however, that nobody thinks very much of anything outside the athletic field. The governor’s band has come early, with all kinds of instruments, especially those which make a very loud noise. A tent has been erected for them in the center of the field, and over the tent is a little American flag. The East is always so incomprehensible and contradictory that it occasions no particular surprise that a Syrian military band should be playing Sousa marches under the American colors.
But it looks as if we had at last succeeded in making the East hustle a little. All Beirut seems to be crowding into the campus. It is almost a part of his religion for an Oriental never to do anything on time; yet the grand stands are already full, and the soldiers stationed at the gate-house can hardly hold the crowds back long enough for the porter to collect their tickets. The scene is dazzling, dizzying, bewildering, like Coney Island and the Derby and the Yale-Princeton game all jumbled together.
There must be at least five thousand strangers on the college grounds, and every color of the spectrum is here, especially the very brilliant ones. The military band, with their blue uniforms and red fezes, seem almost shabby and dull in comparison with the more garish coloring all around them. The seats are mostly filled with women, whose showy dresses are hideous individually and beautiful as part of the general color scheme. Moslem harems are here with their weird veils, and there are many pretty Levantines in rich, inappropriate silks and satins. In Syria, however, the ladies do not monopolize the bright garments. Handsome young Turkish officers swagger along under yards of gold lace, merchants from the city are wearing their best and baggiest satin trousers and embroidered waistcoats and broad silk sashes, while the sons of Egyptian millionaires sport the elegantly fitting coats and tinted vests which now form the favorite costume of the streets of Cairo. The color spreads over the field and up the grand stands, with bright splashes along the sides of the dormitories. Long strips of red and white bunting flaunt the college colors; American and British and Greek and Turkish flags wave above, and the students’ windows are decorated with their national emblems or class banners.