Mrs. Najla Saab's Address

And here we publish below the text of the two speeches delivered on this occasion by two distinguished ladies of ours, who express, most truly, the feeling of the Lebanese woman.

Mrs. Najla Saab's Address

Today — after long generations — this Arab Lebanese land has been freed of the last foreign soldier who trod the homeland to uphold a tyrant's authority, an exploiting colonial rule, a domination degrading to the nation's dignity, and a foreign influence that humiliated it, paralyzed its national characteristics, destroyed its faculties, and held it back from free, unhindered growth and from its fulfillment toward its own good and glory.

We saw the dawn of this day after a night whose depths were pitch-dark, whose events followed one upon another, whose sacrifices and calamities multiplied upon us. So today we are among the happiest of people, and among those who know best how cherished hopes take form as a standing reality, how precious sacrifices turn into fruit and harvest, how the blood of martyrs shines forth as light and radiance, and how the common effort is crowned with victory, though after a time.

This day did not come by chance, nor did time cast it forth by accident; rather it is, whether one knows it or not, the work of this nation, the product of its will, the fruit of its sacrifices and its patience. So to the Arab Lebanese people — to the people, to the peasants of the village and the common folk of the city; to that peasant of whom, singly, no mention was ever heard; to that common man whose name was never set down in a newspaper and never spoken from a platform, but who, in his totality, is the substance of this nation, its matter and its spirit — to these do we present this great day.

Our happiness is our gallant, trusty peasant; our happiness and our strength is the common man among us,

the good man, son of good men, he who never once turned from his Arabness — never for a day turned Turk, nor turned French, nor threw himself away to take on the character of others... he whom no fearful terror could sweep from his aspiration to independence, whom no enticement could turn aside, whose awareness and jealous pride the foreigner's advocates and the cunning of the schemers could not destroy; that people which was not frightened and did not flee, but bore the greatest sacrifices in its wealth and its blood, and endured hardship with a Lebanese, Arab patience, until it made its will to freedom prevail over every other will, and by its awareness and its striving put an end to every other endeavor — that people is the one that achieved this day and made it great, because the day is its own and comes of it.

The greatness of this day is that it is the child of the nation's will, a natural springing-forth of Lebanon's authentic Arab characteristics — characteristics which, though stifled for a stretch of time by foreign influence, political, cultural, and otherwise, remained firm-founded in its soil, just as they remained firm in the blood that runs in our veins, just as they raised up a living spirit in our hearts and a proud loftiness in the peaks of Lebanon and in the noses of its sons.

This day and what follows it: Evacuation Day is the end of colonialism and the beginning of building. And for the sake of building, our forces must be mustered, our efforts made equal to the task and organized under the leadership of those charged with authority among us, at their head His Excellency our beloved, peerless struggler of a President, so that we may hand on to the coming generations our dear Lebanon happier in condition, more abundant in blessing and comfort, and mightier in station, and so that its growth may go steadily forward across time, generation after generation.

Our aim from now on is to create a national entity built on the foundations of justice, tolerance, cooperation, and earnest work — an entity in which we shall know blessing and in which we shall take pride, for it is what we seek.

The greatness of this day is that it comes of this people's will and striving, by which it answered the call of freedom. And its greatness is that it is a call from the nation for the creation of its longed-for national entity, which it keeps and defends because it is a piece of itself, because it is the guardian of its soul and the expression of its feeling and its awareness.