The Woman's Voice on Radio Lebanon

The Directorate of Propaganda, Publication, and Broadcasting has prepared a program devoted to the woman's voice, at half past seven every Saturday evening. The magazine The Woman's Voice opened this program on the eleventh of January with the broadcast we set down below, delivered by the accomplished Miss Marie Sabri.

Good evening.

This is another voice for woman in Lebanon, which she sends out, at this hour and on this day of every week, from Radio Lebanon: a soft, delicate, gentle voice that has never been used to harshness, and never will be, save in the face of injustice and darkness — a tender, loving, compassionate voice rising from a breast filled with a faith that cannot be shaken, with a self-sacrifice that knows no cowardice, and with a devotion that gives out of duty, expecting neither reward nor thanks — and lastly, a rebellious, rising voice that folds away behind it long generations of suppression and submission, to break loose, in this new generation, free like the rest of the voices!

I say: another voice — for in my mind is the thought that woman has a voice besides it, which rises bold, guiding, and creative in a monthly women's magazine that has attained, during these last months, a very high station in the world of the Arabic press — I mean the magazine The Woman's Voice.

That was three years ago, when the Lebanese Women's League, still in the first stage of its founding, felt the pressing need for woman in Lebanon and in all her Arab lands to have a women's magazine that would take up the broken thread of woman's struggle in the field of the Arabic press; that would express her thoughts, and embody her hopes and wishes in Arabic letters of shining eloquence; that would carry to the speakers of Arabic under every sky the news of the women's renaissance in the Arab world; and that would bear, finally, a liberating, progressive, creative message concerning what thought, literature, and art ought to be, and what the home, society, and the homeland ought to be.

And so the magazine The Woman's Voice saw the light, in answer to a felt need for it and in pursuit of a noble purpose. And if devoted hands join together, and contented hearts cooperate, and enlightened, conscious minds lend one another support, it will not be long before this unique magazine becomes a great women's press institution, striving to extend its benefits and its uses to the mother, the girl, and the child... and to the father as well! For how greatly we still lack an institution of this kind, to furnish the library of home and school with intellectual, literary, and artistic nourishment, nationally directed, that would spare child and parents the picking up of the crumbs that fall to them from the tables of foreign libraries.

The magazine The Woman's Voice, then, does not aspire merely to be a fine newspaper; it aspires as well to be a fine library. For it is truly a disgrace that a people should count itself free, rising, and civilized, while in the language of its infants and its children there are only a few books fit for reading. And if blame falls upon anyone, it falls in the first degree upon the popular institution that works for reform. And what reform is this, if it does not begin from the foundation — from the child, nay, from the home as a whole, as the cell of which is composed the body of the social organism that is the nation. We are, on the whole, scandalously negligent in our concern for the Arabic library.

And so, madam,
You now have, thanks to the Lebanese Women's League, two voices: a voice in the press and a voice on the radio. Upon my life, it is a precious opportunity that has been granted you, in this free era of independence, such as was never granted to your predecessors in any past era of history. Let us seize this opportunity, and let us work together, with all devotion and all earnestness, to make these two voices the most beautiful thing that a mind can conceive and a pen and a tongue express. Do not begrudge these two voices your opinions and your observations; do not withhold from them your counsel and your advice; and do not hesitate a single moment to extend to them the hand of effective help. Our address is Dar al-Kitab — The Woman's Voice magazine — Beirut — Lebanon. Do not forget this address. For we are anxious to arrange, in cooperation with you, a program for these few minutes so absorbing that it will be a delight to hear and to heed. It will touch upon frank and grave subjects concerning the home, society, and the homeland.

And finally: we believe only in the rising work into which every individual of the people dips his heart's blood, not the gloss of his tongue. Let this rising work of ours, then, be dipped in the blood of the heart, not in the gloss of the tongue. Then, and only then, shall we deserve it, and shall we see it grow and flower and bear fruit whose harvest is good and whose taste is sweet.

Until we meet again, my honored listeners, at this same hour on Saturday evening.