I shall not sing the praises of children, nor shall I say that they are our own hearts walking upon the earth. This is a thing we all feel; and were it not for the importance of children, and had we not appreciated their place now and in the future, this great number would not have gathered here today. We have sung much and talked much — but what have we done? What have we prepared for our children? And what are we going to do to raise the young generation of this beloved homeland? Do you want our children to go on being raised on all manner of cultures? Or do you want them Lebanese, whose language is Arabic, proud of their country, striving to raise it to a high level of progress, of pure culture, and of true civilization?

The physical upbringing of the young is less important, and less difficult, than their spiritual upbringing and the direction of their minds and their deeds. That is why we see the institutes of education floundering in a current of experiments, and the psychologists coming out at us every day with

some new departure.

And we see the various groups that believe in sundry social doctrines imposing them upon the young, relying on force and on propaganda dressed as justification, so that the young may profess what those groups favor and adopt their principles.

Nazism, Fascism, and the various parties began their work by spreading propaganda among the young, because the young are pliable, capable of being molded and directed; they take up different tendencies, embrace them with enthusiasm, and grow fanatical for them.

Schools and cultures have multiplied in our country, small as it is. They are French here, English and American there, and sectarian; and before the war there were Russian, Italian, and German ones.

We do not deny their merit and their usefulness, from a hundred years ago down to this day. But the time has come for us, now that we are an independent nation, to unify our culture

and prepare it for our young in a form that accords with our present consciousness and the glory of the ancient East. For the East, as you know, gave the world in the past a civilization, sciences, and a religious philosophy for which the world is still, and will always remain, in its debt. In chemistry, medicine, astronomy, mathematics, and the other sciences we gave the West many of the foundations and the knowledge upon which it proceeds. Then we gave the three monotheistic religions: in the Torah, the Gospel, and the Koran is the philosophy of spiritual and social life — a lamp that guides the world to the true path.

Yes, the time has come for us to unify our culture and make it of us and for us, taking from the many cultures — after all we have profited from them — whatever suits us, so that we may form a Lebanese Arab culture by which the young generation of Lebanon shall be raised.

The Lebanese people at present is divided into several groups, differing in thought and expression,

Your dwelling is gardens and your water is Kawthar—

Lebanon, you are the supreme bliss.

Spring has draped your hills in silken mantles

that with their beauty ravish and captivate all who behold,

Embroidered robes whose broidery the rainbow

tends with everything that delights and enchants.

How wondrous the fabrics of mist that the waterfall

weaves from the cotton of the snows and spreads abroad!

When the noonday blaze grows fierce they become a canopy,

moist and cool, beneath which the green, dewy land lies shaded.

Lebanon, O land of shades, a dwelling

where the beloved summer is sweet and is preferred!

Your paths are strewn with roses and with dew,

and ambergris canopies whoever walks them toward you.

Your shady bowers are the very likeness of a garden

of love, resplendent with fair women, all in flower.

O playground of the gazelles, how many a meadow

where the fawn sports and the wild calf frolics!

Never have I beheld you for an hour but my heart

flew out to you, and what I gazed upon stirred me.

Lebanon, it is enough for the soul that you are a homeland—

O magic of all that beauty composes and scatters!