Save the Homeless Children

...Our children, these lovely lilies—God guard those who guard them, and God deal gently with those who come to their aid. This noble voice that rises to lift the nightmare of humiliation from their souls is nothing other than the voice of a nation that wants to raise up for the generations a sound edifice of men.

It is fortunate that the educated Lebanese woman has begun to feel the responsibility demanded of her before the present and coming generations; she is working now to the limit of her power—indeed beyond her strength—to make the children of her country happy and to share in the progress of her homeland and the raising of its standing.

The first thing that certain of Lebanon's noble ladies set before their eyes was the rescue of innocent children from the claws of disease and grinding labor—children who have scarcely passed their seventh or eighth year before their families fling them into the field of hard labor instead of sending them to schools. So you see nothing but barefoot children in ragged clothes, deafening your ears and splitting your head with their distressing cries wherever you walk, until a late hour of the night. And this is besides the humiliation, the ill-treatment, and the contempt, so that they grow up feeble and abased.

These are the pieces of our own hearts, wilting and wasting away before they have dawned. This is the generation of the future. This is the good seed.

And then—why does the child work while the father does not? Because the employers want children, not men: children whom they can cheat of their due and satisfy with a pittance, not men who demand their rights and are content with nothing but much.

The first cause of this calamity is the employers—men of the loftiest culture, possessed of a conscience whose like is rarely found among mankind! This ceaseless pursuit of money and position has distracted the employers from noble aims; they must strip this film, if only a little, from their eyes, so as to take their part in raising the standing of their country—for money, when spent in its proper channels, is a tremendous power.

We cannot lay the blame upon the fathers and mothers, illiterate as they are, living in perpetual filth and abject poverty, with no one to pull them out of the abyss into which their evil star has cast them.

Our charitable associations have begun to establish a special branch for giving health lessons to mothers; for their ignorance of everything touching matters of health is the essential cause of the neglect of their children—a neglect that destroys them; and should disease spread through the length of our land, the first it will strike down are these poor souls.

Let us return now to these wretched children, whose grievous crying fills the earth and mounts to the sky and fills the wide spaces of the air.

Some of our generous ladies hold parties during the year to cheer these children and bring joy and gladness into their pure hearts, while others offer clothing and provisions to destitute families. This is a very beautiful thing, and more beautiful still that our country should have charitable ladies—but is this medicine sufficient for this deadly disease? No: it is a mere soothing sedative. It is not the healing cure.

The first duty that humanity enjoins is that we should not leave these poor children to grow up and come of age in ignorance. One small school with room for thirty children is not enough. We must take by the hand these waifs, lost in the wilds of humanity, who reap nothing but humiliation and disgrace as the fruit of their grinding toil, and with whom their masters deal as mighty tyrants deal with the weak.

Let us come together, then, and form groups to look into their affairs and take them by the hand. We must keep these children from the company of the corrupt and from the sight of the vices of the idlers who swarm the streets, lying in wait for every child to trap him in their snares, so that he becomes wicked and depraved.

A child's heart is a white page: it should be received by the soft hands of woman, to trace upon it learning and refinement—not by the hands of butchers, to fill it with evil and corruption.

The responsibility hung upon our necks is very heavy, for we need every boy and girl to fill the terrible void which the calamities of past wars have brought—and which those to come will bring. The rate of crime falls as the number of the educated rises. Let us cultivate their minds, then, and refine their souls; for these are the men of tomorrow who will keep the sanctity of the laws and share in the safeguarding of their nation—while those who grow up in luxury cannot be relied upon.