We and the Peace

By "we" I mean the community of emigrants whom good fortune destined to live through the present world crisis far from everything called hardship, hunger, torment, and annihilation.

We live in comfort, compared with the millions of human beings floundering amid troubles and woes; we stand as spectators — no shock rocks our being, no war levy is imposed upon us. The human slaughter has ended, and in its place has settled a shadow of transparent peace. I say this because today's peace is nothing but an illusory truce with no rest in it, so long as greed lies deep in the breasts of the leaders who dominate the weak, drawing off their blood to make it a mount for their thrones. But let us call it peace and be done. Will you tell me, children of my country, what effect the peace has had on our souls, and what provision we laid up during the war and at the coming of peace?...

In this land we are guests, no more, no less, and we shall remain strangers, intruders in the eyes of its people, until no trace remains of the first emigrant caravan. We came to gather money, and gather it we did; what, then, keeps us from returning, now that the war is over and no barrier stands as an obstacle in the way of travel and passage?

We proclaim patriotism and strive to aid the homeland with money — and no one who saw the work of the Syrian-Lebanese committee during the country's late ordeal will deny it, nor the Palestinian community's efforts to succor its country and ward off the Zionist danger from its lands.

All this inspires pride and admiration; but it is not enough, for love of the homeland does not stop at singing its love from afar; it demands the exertion of effort and the venturing of everything that leads to raising it up in its new awakening — the call to liberate the homeland avails nothing if we do not join word to deed.

Our country needs working hands and rising forces — it wants us ourselves, with our money, our strength, and our efforts. Money is no substitute for the experience we have acquired through the years of our emigration, and our sentiment cannot replace for it our children, who alone are its future wealth, its sole hope, and the strong force to lift it from its stumble and make it a free nation, honored on every side.

I do not address the emigrant in Chile alone; I call to all emigrants in the American lands generally — I want my voice to reach them [...] which is the voice of woman, whom you hold above all things; and I want my call to pierce their ears and stir their innermost hearts, so that they rise to answer the homeland's call.

Come, my brothers, let us close our ranks and make ready for the return; and just as we emigrated here poor, let us return to our country rich and honored, and take our children with us, that they may come to know the land of their fathers, and that the bonds between us and them grow strong, so that we are not ciphers in their eyes after our death.

Let us take them as tourists, as the American does who goes to gaze on the ancient, venerable monuments of our country, crossing the distances and spending what he has saved through the years, in order to carry in his breast new knowledge of a land to which no tie binds him save the desire for knowledge and the longing to learn.

And I do not know what prevents the educated youth from gathering no fewer than a hundred young men for a tour to view monuments that are among the glories of the East and one of the wonders of the world, for which the sons of the West envy us; if life there pleases them, they may decide to settle; if not, they return bearing experience and acquaintance with a new tongue and a new world.

And what does the aging man wait for, who came here in his youth and has managed to amass a fortune that spares him further struggle, before returning to his country to breathe its wholesome air and live what remains of his life in its flourishing regions, recovering his vigor and shedding the ailments that cling to him? For I do not exaggerate when I say that it is rare to find one among us who does not complain of some kind of illness — and I do not know what breathes them into our breasts: the climate of these lands, or the effects of civilization?

We came healthy and we shall return ailing; and yet our country opens its arms to receive its dutiful children, calling to us imploringly to return to its embrace. Shall we shrink from answering its call?

Let us go and build the great factories, sparing hundreds of workers the pinch of need and teaching them to earn their bread by the sweat of their brows instead of being a burden on others — so that the Jews are left no argument against us when they say that it is they who founded the factories and set the wheels of labor in motion.

How many working hands in our country groan under the weight of want, because outrageous prices and the narrowness of the field of work leave them standing with folded arms, unable to earn their daily bread — while we here found great mills and employ thousands of foreign workers, instead of our factories standing in our homelands, worked by the hands of our countrymen, so that we give them life and give the country life together, and at the same time keep alive our memory, which