A Small Stone in a New Building

The American College for Girls in Beirut celebrated the laying of the cornerstone of a new building, attended by a distinguished company of the women and men of learning. On this occasion Mrs. Zahia Salman delivered the fine address which we publish below, wishing this institute continued growth and flourishing:

We gather today, the day commemorating the founding of this flourishing institute, not merely to glorify the memory of its founders and to praise those who conduct its administration, nor for applause and good wishes, as is always our way on an occasion such as this.

But this time we gather with another motive and for a loftier purpose!

We gather so that each of us may lay a small stone in a new building.

We gather to found a new Kaaba of learning and knowledge, to which every girl will make her pilgrimage who searches for the meaning of life and whose soul yearns to know its highest ideals.

We gather to raise a new stronghold in the chain of fortresses standing in this country — not to repel the assault of an invader or a conqueror, but to repel the army of ignorance, to batter down the fortresses of superstition, and to shatter the chains of worn-out traditions!

We gather to celebrate the raising of a new lighthouse on this beautiful shore and upon this green hill — a lighthouse sending out a far-reaching beam of the light of knowledge, scattering from around us the darkness of illusion and stupidity, and lighting the wide horizon before the rising, forward-moving Arab girl — the girl who has begun to explore the unknown regions of life and to unriddle the mysteries of science and the secrets of nature, her motto being always that eloquent motto which this college has taken as its emblem:

To strive to seek — to find and not to yield

Memory carries me back, as I stand on this majestic hill, among these towering edifices and this flourishing construction — carries me back to the recent past, to the year 1930, when I was a student at this college, and the college stood in another place, and when this very hill was hard of passage, all rocks and thorns and rough ground; and I was here on an evening stroll in the company of the late president, Mrs. Frances Irwin, who first conceived the idea of establishing this college.

Frances Irwin looked around her for a moment, then was silent another moment; and presently that heavenly inspiration shone from her, her eyes flashed with the light of the successful discoverer, and she said: "What would you say to moving the Junior College to this majestic height?"

Frances Irwin did not look with the eye of present reality; she looked with the eye of thought, and with the far watchfulness of imagination, at what might come to be! What are seventeen years in the life of a nation, or in the eye of history?

The idea of that first president was realized faster than magic; in the twinkling of an eye we found ourselves watching building crowd upon building, and that barren hill became, as we see it today, a fertile field of thought and knowledge.

Ladies and gentlemen!

This college, young though it is, has played an important part in the development of the life of the Arab woman in our beloved East. It is the college that gave the girl the opportunity to become acquainted with the higher sciences, and paved before her the roads to university culture.

It is the college that opened before her new horizons of clear, free-moving thought and of honorable work; it is the college that trained her to bear burdens, breathed into her the spirit of social responsibility, made it incumbent upon her to work for the betterment of the environment in which she grew up, and thus made her feel her own importance in the building of life.

The graduates of this college have marched in the vanguard of the women working in the social field, and in the women's renaissance in Lebanon and Syria and in all the Arab lands. The brilliant works they have done and are doing are a source of pride and honor for us and for the college — the teacher and the doctor alike, the woman of letters, the employee, and the model housewife: each of them has worked in her own circle to raise

the level of general life and to exalt woman's place in it.

Hundreds of these graduates look toward us today in spirit, and envy us this happy opportunity given us in this general gathering to acknowledge the favor and confess the debt of gratitude.

In my name and in theirs I offer to our mother the college, to its worthy president and its gracious dean, heartfelt congratulations on this its blessed feast, asking for it lasting existence, long life, and full growth, so that we may soon see it become that great women's university of which we dream and to which we look. Farewell.