Evacuation Day — The Speech of Ellen Rihan

I once knew a venerable Lebanese old man who wrote to his son in the Mahjar after the First World War, saying: “We are now twenty days old, for twenty days ago the Turkish and German armies evacuated our country.” Then I knew this same old man to shut himself away on his farms in the mountain after the foreign soldiers entered our country, so that he might not see a foreign army treading this soil as a despotic ruler. And I knew this old man, days before his death, addressing his son, who had returned from the Mahjar, saying: “The end of my life has drawn near, and death does not frighten me. But one thing grieves me: that my bones will be buried in a land the colonizer occupies.” Rejoice, then, O venerable elder, and let your bones rest at ease, for Lebanon is now ours — sovereign, free, and independent — and no colonizer's foot shall tread its soil again...

Gentlemen: the Lebanese woman was invited to take part in the historic celebration of raising the flag of ransomed Lebanon over the Grand Serail. Then she was invited to the ceremony of unveiling the Evacuation tablet. At both ceremonies she stood not as a spectator stands, but as one who has come to reap the fruits of her labors, for history has recorded the name of the Lebanese woman beside the names of the heroes of independence. And she, having been called to do her patriotic duty, feels that before her lies a long and arduous task; that she must raise the rising generation in love of the homeland and respect for national dignity, and strengthen in its soul the aspiration toward the highest ideals in the building of the nation; just as she feels that she must prepare for the future a generation far better, God willing, than the present one. For the woman who went out into the street in anger to defend the dignity of this homeland, and the woman who shared with her husband and her son in the patriotic fervor, takes pride today and keeps the feast, and prays God to fulfill all her hopes. And she urges all the Lebanese to work hand in hand to fight armies that ravage us and surpass the colonizer in cruelty and humiliation: armies of poverty, ignorance, sectarian fanaticism, selfishness, and greed. And she comes before the heroes of our independence and our rulers — who are, praise God, of us and among us — begging them to fight these armies with a diligence that knows no weariness, for our independence will not be clear and manifest — even after the foreigner's evacuation — unless every Lebanese does his duty in ordering every side of our national life: health, economic, and social.

Gentlemen: besides the meaning of departure, evacuation has another meaning, which is polishing. Now that the colonizer has evacuated and gone away, we must tend our independence and our morals with polishing. And these are polished only by sound refinement and sound learning grounded upon firm morals. Learning, refinement, and morals are qualities we must create in our little ones through a national Lebanese upbringing in national Lebanese schools — not through an upbringing fed by the foreign spirit with divisiveness and the various foreign leanings. The object of our hopes, then, is the rising generation that will make our feast days overflow with pride and gladness. And if I may be permitted to address His Excellency the President and His Excellency the Prime Minister, I say: honored Presidents, both of you are among the heroes of independence, and you have seen how the Lebanese people rose up to support you and accompany you in the struggle to win our cherished independence. This noble people congratulates you on the Feast of the Evacuation and wishes you health and strength to polish its independence and to order its administration, so that Lebanon may become a source of pride to every eye. This same people — and I think I know its opinion and its leanings well — feels its responsibility as an independent nation and longs for a general refinement and for a national, moral culture. This people wants to remove from its body the reckless bribe-taking member, the selfish and greedy, the negligent and treacherous. When this people says “Long live Lebanon,” it means by it Lebanon with its devoted working men and its patriotic working women — nothing else.

And as I close the word of the Lebanese woman on the Feast of the Evacuation, I say: Long live Lebanon. Long live every man and every woman devoted to Lebanon. Long live the upright, the truthful, and the proud of soul. Long live the faithful servant of this ransomed homeland.