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Show 4% v •Tan 3, 1929 Dear Friends:- "ln"nÉ* L L » ? ? ! ! ! X Tr°íe ^yl^st circular the new alphabet iiad just Recome en aetuality As I write this the wliole nation. between the rges of sixteen and forty, are being cornpelled to leam to read it Government officials and school children llave already been put Lrou°h the procese, now they nave begun on the rest of the pooulation ?fe t¿ff are t a S i ^ f h ^ í i ^ ^ ^ - T ^ 1 ^ *?a ^aiigements, here in Smyrna they are takmg the little wmter vacation we are now enloying; and ohligmg the gov't school teachers to use afternoons and^venfngs to teach men m the evenings, tornen in the afternoons, After it is orer the students will he given a certifícate without wh ch they con no? T.IÁ oía m a a r s V f 6 r ^ t o a t s o r P^l i c automobile service to vil-i2fí!: course foreigners are exempt from this, and we can raaé the letters anyway. In Constantinople they are allowíng the peoplé two diT noV° did not. I' dZon.'ít Vk1n1o6w7 whÍaTt + Íthhe?i r °pled nlaGltttieerss > araen.d *I«> w* onmdoentrl 'hso w fi'tt hoHyl T be enforced in the country at large, obviously tram ways ar f e limited application. It is a M g experiment in creating a literate " nation - providmg folks over forty really don't count, and fo" Sis 30b it is danng to make the age limit as high as that oven/ ihe next excitement m school jireles is the death of Nejati Bey, the minieter of education. He was a comparatively young man, died thre daj 1 iollowing an operation. The cuestión now is, who will gst bis piafe somebody more or less favorable to foreign schools? Nejati Bey was not especially so, and there are men among the educatioíal officíals Sí Í f ^ W h L ? í ! m u c h.m o r e so. Speaking of officials, havti you all read Halide Edib's articles in "Asia?" If not by all means do I sup- ^ t e H » T ^ i 1 C ° m e °UÍ í n 5°°k f 0 m SOme d a ^ ^rhaps with additional material, They are extraordinaria vivid, just, and enlightening. Our little winter vacation is about half over, with very little tí ^J°m?ltShment™mj Part' as T sPe n t t h e iMt two days of school in bed with one of these flu colds that are all about now, and as it has left me without much energy apparently I am utilizing the vacation to be really very lazy. We all had a good time Christmas, just before W cold we took both Monday and Tuesday as holidavs, and'went out to the Paradise school Sunday afternoon, and had a very'happy time there £!?rf$ ^ c ^ r a t i o n ^ere was simplified and eaddened by the ' death of one of their students from pneumonía Saturday night. Their faculty and student body nave been harder hit with this epidenic than we. We were so glad to meet the next-year-members of the facultv the Whites and McParlanes who were down from language school for the holi-day. Mr. McFarlane has been here before as a tutor, but before I carne, the others are all new, and we now certainly look forward to having tnem here right along. Speaking of the Paradise schoo'i do unduly blame me for the fact that the c ,-lendars a good many of you-gettmg as a Christmas remembrance from me are so late in re achine \< Ihey are as you will see,International College caLendars, and some of the^people who wrote for them (not myself) were so late getting in their contributions, that, plus the inevitable busíness delays of the country made it almost Christmas before I got hcld of them to send" I thought you might be all interested ín a pub11 catión showing th-'r letters,^where it would be more or less possible to tell what the translation is, and the letters I write make such ccnstant allusion to that school you might be interested in a closer touch with it I not are you wish the general get-up was more artistic. but in time it l¿t done mainly by houses do not give some of the Turkish tutors and the much chance for good work. may be local printin; As I look back over the past three months for notable events in the school they do not appear very numerous. On the other hand WP have had a contmuous atino sphere of willingness to work of ^eneral good spirit and cheerfulness, of friendliness and trustfulness among all our students which is most encouraging. In our little discussion |