The Teacher of the World

It is not I who lay down this truth, but the history of mankind since mankind began. Woman — she who in our country drags many chains, chief among them ignorance and remoteness from the understanding of social problems — is the teacher of the world, and it is she who knew how to open before man the road of truth and light. In this short word of mine I do not wish to argue and to analyze — there is no profit for readers, men or women, to reap from argument and analysis on this subject — but I would recall that woman has been able, in every scene of history, to share man's labors and to surpass him in many of them. Why, then, this monopoly, and these chains that man would set in the path of our working women?

Our Arab countries, one and all, stand in urgent need of woman's efforts, spent here and there in the building of a sound and wholesome society — not of drugged women who know no meaning in life beyond adornment and affectation.

The women's movement in Lebanon gives glad tidings that this homeland is blessed with the good mother, the wise wife, and the capable, managing woman. In our mothers are radiant faces of goodness, fruitfulness, and blessing; and in them are dutiful, tender hearts holding a warmth that strengthens our faith and gives life a meaning in our eyes.

And in our society there is the wife who has known how to melt into her husband in a life of love, sacrifice, and devotion, for the sake of building a family over which the angels of happiness and the banners of peace hover.

And in our educated women, who have been given the chance to sip some measure of learning, there is that which moves us, the daughters of today, to lift our heads in love of the daughters of our sex, in pride of them and of their influence in their righteous works — works which the homeland will immortalize for them, and for which the new generation will thank them.

Of all these women we stand in need, my lord Man; and all of them must be taught the higher learning, so that the Arab woman may return to her first estate and teach the whole world the meaning of true love and true peace!..