Graduation Ceremonies

June takes pride over its fellow months of the year in the ceremonies held, here and there, to distribute diplomas to the graduating daughters and sons of the rising generation — this generation on which we pin our hopes, and whose tomorrow we await with an expectation that, God willing, shall not be disappointed.

And June, in this pride, is surely in the right: for what virtue is of loftier worth to man than knowledge, and what certificate is of higher rank than the certificate of having gained a share of it? Neither May with its blossoms, nor August with its clusters of grapes, nor October with its embrace of the seeds of life, nor December with its blessed rain, can stand up to June in the arena of pride. Knowledge remains, without rival, the mistress of human values altogether. Long ago Plato said: "Knowledge is the greatest good, for without it there is no good at all..."

And here we publish some scenes from some of the great ceremonies held in Beirut on this occasion. The reader will see our girls in a moment that nothing approaches in eagerness, yearning, and gladness except, one may suppose, another moment dearer to hearts and sweeter still!..

In this moment, too, there is a deep feeling of triumph after years of strenuous study, of toilsome learning, and of a wait that wavered between hope and disappointment. And in it, also, there is another feeling — a feeling of superiority: of superiority over some of one's fellow companions, and over the many thousands of girls whom circumstances did not favor with a seat at the table of knowledge, or even with drawing near to it. In this feeling there is a taint of that temptation which so often steals over man by virtue of his limitedness.

Would that every girl in my country might one day enjoy standing in this moment; then would our condition change, and we should become happy in our homes and in our society. And we have hope, today, in these throngs that come, in ever greater numbers, year after year, to the springs of learning.

We congratulate those who won their diplomas this year, and we hope for them a flourishing future, in which they will take their part, alongside the working women and men, in the field of the national renaissance.