Cedars in Our Hearts... and on the Mountaintops

Last month His Excellency the Minister of National Economy, Mr. Kamal Jumblatt, made an aerial journey over "al-Knaisseh," one of Lebanon's lofty summits, scattering upon it the seeds of the sacred cedar.

This, so far as we know, is the beginning of the execution of a broad program which the noble Minister has drawn up for the reforestation of the Lebanese mountains.

The Woman's Voice is pleased to record this noble deed on its pages, and to publish for its readers the text of the splendid address which His Excellency the Minister broadcast on this occasion.

We have planted the cedar in our hearts, so we must plant it on the summits of Lebanon...

From the heights — and the heights are the cedar's climate and its home — we proceed in this generous hour to sow two million seeds of the cedar tree on the summits of Lebanon, the mountain that has stood almost alone in its tenderness toward this plant of glory.

This is the first of the endeavors of science for whose sake the government of Lebanon and the American Near East Foundation are joining hands:

This symbol, Lebanese in its meaning, dwells today in the heart of every Lebanese, under whatever sky he may be, and whatever his color, his creed, and his origin.

Let it be a renewal of our pledge that we remain constant in our faith in the immortality of a Lebanon clothed in the right and in the values around which we have consented, with honor, to rally.

Let the cedar be planted anew in the twentieth century, that an initiative at work in the home of the thunderbolt, the snow, and the winds, in the refuge of the eagle and of high values, may bind the youth of time to its manhood.

And let us grasp anew, on this awesome and holy occasion, that heroism and creative toil, that the arm and the mind, have with the passing of time become a heritage — the heritage that fused the Lebanese into a single nation, standing firm as the cedar before the hurricanes and, like the truth, paying no heed to falsehood; a heritage that opened itself to every good in the measure that it knew the seeds of every good and every dignity to lie within it.

Long live Lebanon through all the ages!