A Letter to the Reader

With this issue, The Woman's Voice passes its first year under the management of Dar al-Kitab and the supervision of the Lebanese Women's League. It is the right of its readers, scattered under every sky, that we address to them this personal letter, thanking them for the support and kindness they have shown toward this magazine.

Dar al-Kitab took upon itself the running of The Woman's Voice's affairs purely out of its belief in the Arab woman's need of it, and in the necessity of its existence to fill the void of which the women's press in the Arab world had long complained. Dar al-Kitab was certain, with a certainty untouched by doubt, that a project of this kind, rising even to some part of the intellectual and artistic level upon which it insists, would face arduous difficulties, whether on the editorial side or on the administrative side.

And these difficulties have indeed confronted us, and confront us still. In editing, most of our literary pens still incline toward the literature of dry, impersonal articles, which repression, charlatanry, and social dissimulation still keep from expressing the genuine experiences of life. And if the literature of articles has any virtue, it lies, without doubt, outside the line of the fashion at which the press has arrived in recent years. For this fashion tends to keep the paper, which was created for the ordinary reader, from being stuffed with articles composed to express their authors' opinions on abstract intellectual subjects that bear no direct relation to the reality of their existence, and reflect nothing of their souls in their constant, violent struggle with the givens of life and society.

In any case, The Woman's Voice has managed to rally around itself a fine elite of women of letters, among whom we mention the ladies and misses: Ibtihaj Kaddoura, Rose Shahfa, Jamal Karam Harfush, Salwa Dimashqiya al-Sa'id, Ellen Rihan, Aminah Khoury Makdisi, Najla Saab, Asma Tubi, Mary Ajami, Salma al-Haffar, Rose Ghorayeb, Sadhij Nassar, Marie Sabri, Laure Kourani, Samiyah Junblat, Najwa Qa'war, and others in whom we take pride and glory. Yet we know full well that there are women of letters whose belonging to its family The Woman's Voice has not yet won the honor of. And we are in earnest along this path, until this magazine becomes the principal field for all women of talent in the Arab world.

As for the administrative side, the difficulties we have faced, and face still, are harsher and more severe. For the reader in these lands has not yet had the chance, except a little, to arrive at an appreciation of the great sacrifices that are expended in running a paper of quality. The blame falls not so much upon him as upon those who in the past accustomed him to nothing but mercenary papers, which have no message to deliver to the reader beyond extorting the subscription fee from him out of embarrassment and complaisance. The result of this was that there grew up in the reader no sense of responsibility toward the paper that was destined to depend upon him for the means of its survival, its progress, and its circulation. We thank God that the readers of The Woman's Voice have begun to feel their responsibility toward it, in view of what they observe of the efforts expended on its behalf. And how impossible these efforts would be to expend, in their turn, were it not for our firm hope that this sense of responsibility will grow and spread until this magazine is able, in the near future, God willing, to attain the goal for which the Lebanese Women's League founded it.

And thus, every success hoped for this magazine depends upon the measure of the efforts expended for its sake, in administration and in editing, provided that these efforts meet from the reader the appreciation and the sense of responsibility they deserve. As for our own part, we pledge to the reader to perform our full duty toward this magazine, which is his before it is ours. It remains for him, then, to pledge to us to perform his full duty, so that it may no longer be said, after today, that the soil of these lands is not yet fit for the growth of a press of quality.