The Lebanese Nadwa

Our need for a free platform from which Lebanese affairs might be treated was the most pressing of all our needs; and God provided us with Mr. Michel Asmar, who created this platform — indeed two platforms: one for lectures, which is the "Lebanese Nadwa," and another for publishing the lectures, which is the magazine "Lectures of the Nadwa" — so that if some cannot manage to hear the lecturers themselves, they may turn instead to reading the lectures in the Nadwa's magazine. Thus he fulfilled a hope we had thought would remain forever orphaned.

Last year's lecture season was crowded with the men of Lebanon and with Lebanese subjects.

And the founder wished, this season, to go further and further in selecting the subjects that bear most firmly upon the Lebanese question, and in bringing to light its lines and the rules upon which it relies in order to pass through the storms and hurricanes safe and gaining.

He succeeded, in the end, in choosing two series of lectures. The first: "Building the Lebanese House," in which the lecturers, in succession, are Colonel Aziz Ghazi and Messrs. Habib Abu Shahla, Shafiq Hatem, Muhyi al-Din al-Nasuli, Musa Mubarak, Gabriel Menassa, Alfred Naccache, and Mrs. Wadad Cortas, and Messrs. Joseph Najjar, Farid Trad, Dr. Tawfiq Rizk, Fouad Pasha al-Khatib, Hamid Frangieh, Ibrahim Abd al-Al, Ni'meh Thabet, Henri Gemayel, Michel Chiha.

And the second: "Lebanese Faces," in which the lecturers, in succession, are: Messrs. Rushdi Ma'alouf, Fouad Haddad, Salah Labaki, Fouad al-Boustani, Colonel Ghazi, Mrs. Salma Sayegh, and Messrs. Salim Mubarak, Rushdi Ma'alouf, Edouard Honein.

The Lebanese Nadwa opened its season on December 1, 1947, and it will close on June 7, 1948.

Success, then, to all that the Lebanese Nadwa undertakes and to all that its founder Mr. Asmar undertakes — and to ever-growing success, God willing.