The League of Arab Nationalist Women has petitioned His Excellency the exalted President of the Syrian Republic, the Chamber of Deputies, and His Excellency the Prime Minister, requesting the enactment of the full equality of the Syrian woman with the Syrian man, above all in political rights, so that she may take part in elections, in government and in the judiciary, and receive of the various government posts and offices no less than what falls to the man.

We have received from the woman of letters Mrs. Munira Ali al-Muhayri, deputy secretary of the League, the text of the letter it addressed on this subject; we publish the most important of its contents so that our readers everywhere may study it and add their voices to this noble voice crying out in Damascus — the beating heart of the Arab world.

"The Syrian woman — who took an effective part in the struggle to free the country from the yoke of colonialism, and in working for the victory of Palestine and of the other oppressed sister Arab lands in their struggle to break free of the claws of foreign enslavement, and who continues to take part, with every means at her command, in this sacred struggle, which will win for the sons of Arabism their goal of full sovereignty throughout every part of the greater Arab homeland — has furnished, by this work of hers, proof upon proof that she possesses the true national consciousness, the grasp of the duties incumbent upon her toward the nation, and the sense of responsibility, the understanding of it, and the readiness to bear it without delay or hesitation, which make her worthy to share with man in the administration of the affairs of the state — a sharing that must be full and comprehensive.

The right of woman to have seats in the parliamentary assemblies, and to take part on an equal footing with man in the exercise of the legislative, executive, and judicial powers, is a natural

and explicit right which it is no longer possible to deny or ignore in the present age. The human society of today, which strives earnestly to remove every injustice — of whatever kind and shape — that befalls groups and individuals, cannot keep silent over the wrong that woman bears in remaining shut out from participation in political life. It is self-evident that woman, who makes up half the nation, may not be governed by laws in whose enactment she had no share; nor is it just that she should submit to the orders of executive and judicial authorities among whose members there is no one who truly represents woman.

Woman in fact now enjoys all of man's rights, or most of them, in the overwhelming majority of the countries of the world. Certain Eastern nations, such as Turkey and India, have gone before us in recognizing these rights of woman. The latest proof the leaders of India have given that they understand the demands of the age we live in, and that they will not leave colonialism room to accuse them of social backwardness, is that they had an Indian woman preside over the Asian Relations Conference. It may not be easy for superficial people to grasp what aim the men of India had in view in this act; but they may grasp it once they know that one of the means to which the Zionists resort in their misleading propaganda to blacken the reputation of the Arabs — the one that works most deeply on the minds of the peoples of the West — is to describe our nation as a backward nation contributing no share to the world civilization of today; and that the strongest argument they bring forward to fix this notion in people's minds in every part of the world is the dark, tendentious picture they present of the position of woman in the Arab countries.

The age in which we live requires of every nation that seeks a free, proud, and honorable life, and that aspires to rise until it stands