Faisal II

Iraq, and all the Arab countries together, celebrated the birthday of His Majesty King Faisal II. On this happy occasion we are pleased to publish something, however brief, about the life of the beloved child King:

"On a smiling dawn of just such a beautiful day, eleven years past, the Queen Mother was delivered of His Highness the infant prince — the child monarch left an orphan little more than four years after His Majesty the present sovereign of Iraq first breathed the breath of life.

Lebanon knew him while he was still in the first five years of his childhood, when he visited Lebanon in 1940 and passed the summer honored among its hills; Lebanon recalled in him the glorious deeds accomplished in the days of his forefathers, and looked upon him with a gaze of hope and expectation.

Her Majesty the Queen Mother and His Highness the Emir Abdul Ilah devote themselves to the upbringing of the child monarch, tending him after the best manner the Hashemite family has followed in rearing its sons. A select company of men of learning, Arab and foreign, see to his instruction and cultivation. At the beginning of this coming summer he will travel to the British capital, where the choicest of teachers have been engaged to school him in foreign languages. Before long the monarch will be crowned and will mount the throne of his ancestors, and we are confident that he will be the best of successors to the best of predecessors."