Letters

Among last month's events: the International Women's Union invited the Eastern countries to attend a women's social congress in the capital of Sweden, to acquaint the East with social life and the methods followed to invigorate it... The Lebanese Arab Women's Federation delegated the Misses Alvira Jureidini and In'am al-Saghir, and the Cooperation Club delegated the Misses Salma Bajjani and Rose Hawi. A letter has reached us from our delegate to this congress, Miss Alvira Jureidini; we pass on the most important of what it contains to the readers of "The Woman's Voice," hoping that Miss Jureidini will always keep us supplied with news of this important congress.

1 – In Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, there is a public library with 28 branches. This library holds 7,000,000 volumes. It has a special wing for the little ones, containing 20,000 books. Any child at all is allowed to take whatever books he wishes, free of charge, on condition that he return the books at the appointed time. The officials rarely find any difficulty in enforcing this rule—even with the children! In this wing there is a round room where stories are read to the children once a week; and the children may be seen in this library—most of them under ten years old—reading with profit and eagerness, as if they were twenty years of age!

2 – Lebanon was represented at the International Red Cross congress, held in Stockholm last month, by Mrs. Rose Kettaneh and Miss Eva Helou. Mrs. Kettaneh spoke—that zealous, patriotic lady, ardent for the solution of our national causes. She delivered an address, at a general meeting held in the Parliament building in Stockholm, in the name of the Lebanese Red Cross and in the name of humanity, in which she set forth the question of the Palestinian refugees and the painful condition in which they find themselves. She was the first lady to represent Lebanon; her address was most felicitous... and in it she won the admiration of all, and their sympathy for our cause...

3 – At one of the private receptions, the hostess spoke, welcoming the members and begging them to feel as free as if they were in their own countries. Miss Alvira Jureidini then rose, at the prompting of the president of the International Women's Union, Dr. "Reid," and delivered a word of thanks on behalf of the congress delegates. This is what she said:

"In the name of the delegates of all the Eastern countries, I thank Dr. Reid for affording us this happy opportunity—the opportunity of coming to know this great, rising country... My sisters, ladies of Sweden: we left Lebanon with the fire raging in sister Palestine. But the rare hospitality we have known among you, and the kindness and warmth we meet with from you—all this has made us forget, if only for a while, that we came from a land of wars and blood."

From an interview given by the eminent lady Alice Kandaleft Cosma, an official in the Syrian section of the United Nations organization, to an American newspaper, in which she said:
"The women of the Arabs, one and all, have now acquired the latest fashions of modern dress; and the only rights the women of the Arabs do not enjoy are political rights—and these are not far out of reach, because, when the Arab states were shown the United Nations organization's proposal concerning woman's political rights, no voices were raised in opposition to this proposal!

"Among the resolutions of the general Arab Women's Union congress, held in Cairo in the winter of 1944, was a demand upon the Arab governments for woman's political rights; and this demand likewise met with no opposition or refusal.

"The Arab woman today fills her time with study and reading. Education in all the universities is mixed. We have the woman lawyer, the woman doctor, the nurse, and the teacher... and all of them work with success and energy to prove to the Arab man their competence to take up grave responsibilities."

From the writer Balqis Abu Khadud, of "Freetown" in Africa, a letter in which she expresses her feeling toward "The Woman's Voice" and her eagerness to read it always. "The Woman's Voice," hearing this encouragement from its readers, is anxious to declare that it will spare no effort to bring its readers to the desired goal it seeks in publishing this magazine:

And this is Miss Abu Khadud's letter:

My distinguished ladies,
A greeting of thanks and esteem.

To proceed: your unceasing vigil over the raising of the level of the Eastern woman, veiled in the darknesses of ignorance for no short time, is worthy indeed of honor and esteem; as are your everlasting care and your tireless concern in editing and managing "The Woman's Voice" in a manner that fulfills the hoped-for aspiration, with all the abundant benefits in it of which we stand in the utmost need. I am not exaggerating when I say that the magazine "The Woman's Voice" holds a place in my heart that no other magazine holds. Then, I do not know how I ought to offer your ladyships the amplest thanks and the highest praise for your kindness in sending replacements for numbers that never reached me—which I believe was the fault of the post—and I congratulate you on how well you listen to the letters of subscribers and how greatly you attend to matters that concern them. And I promise, my ladies, that I shall exert whatever effort I can to spread "The Woman's Voice" among my sisters here, certain that it will bring them their profit.

Finally, we can only stand before your noble struggle, esteeming your lofty sacrifice and thanking you for your great good works. May you remain a beacon of learning and letters, and a shining lamp for the press. Be pleased to accept my highest respect and esteem.

Yours faithfully,
Balqis Abu Khadud

From the man of letters Wahid Abboud, of Hama, some verses of poetry, which we publish for him by way of encouragement; and we advise him to read a great deal of the solid old poetry, so that the yearnings of the poetic faculty may grow strong in him and his imagination gain force.

Hayfa! Your phantom lingers still in my eye, guarded by the lids.
Hayfa, my only hope, your absence will never weigh lightly on me.
How can I be steadfast, when the surge of longing has stirred my sorrows?
The cup does not quench my burning, truly—nor do my streaming tears.
I swear by your love—in meeting and in parting—you are the desire of all eyes.
I have planted a love that grows with the passing of the years.
However distance tyrannizes over me, your love is kept safe in my heart.

Hama — Wahid Abboud

"Love is self-interest": a word sent to us by the singer Baha' al-Din Rawwas, in which he denies that love is sacrifice—motherhood itself is, in his view, a kind of selfishness... And he denies that a woman could ever love one of those unhappy dreamers whom God has denied the blessing of beauty and intelligence. These are opinions in which there is much boldness and extremism:

"When a person loves, he loves himself. Yes—we love, in the first place, ourselves; and we make of those we love lamps, which we set up before our eyes to tell us of the extent of the vanity and selfishness within us; and it is we who fabricate love and shape it to suit our aims and our pride.

"Let us take the artist—the most delicate of men in feeling and sensibility—as an example. When the artist loves, he loves only his own imagination, which he has cast over the one he loves; you see him look at his beloved as he looks at a canvas painted with his own brush, or at a piece of poetry or of music of his own making, the inspiration of his own fancy. He loves the qualities of the one he adores because they are a copy of his own qualities, because they please him and his soul finds rest in them, and because they kindle in him genius and feeling and drive him to lofty creation... He loves his own self, and his own self only...

"Even motherhood—supposed to be the noblest of love's affections, and the highest form of sacrifice—is also a kind of selfishness... For the mother loves only her child, who is a piece of her own body and a miniature image of herself, and because she depends upon him in her old age.

"And when the time comes—and it will not come—when we love an ideal love, without an aim or the gratification of one of our impulses, and when a man loves the children of others exactly as he loves his own children... then we shall believe that there is an ideal love, stripped of aim and of selfishness."

From an article by Miss Janet Rihan, of Tyre, entitled "Woman Can Benefit the Nation More Than Man," in which she expressed the Arab woman's yearning to rise from beneath the traditional nightmares that press upon her, and that for a time have kept her from giving expression to the great possibilities within her.

We have chosen from her article these fine passages, in which she shows the greatness of the responsibility laid upon woman as mother and as wife:

"The grandest and greatest role woman plays in life is the role of motherhood. The father cannot carry within his breast, for his little child, what the mother carries for him. It is she who surrounds him with her care, spreads over him the wing of her mercy and tenderness, and pours her heart into his heart. She keeps watch over him through her nights, bearing all life's pains and calamities for his sake, neither complaining nor fretting, but growing in tenderness toward him and in sacrifice for him in the measure of the efforts she spends for his comfort, until he passes from the stage of childhood to the stage of youth. Here she begins to breathe into him the spirit of the love of God, the great Creator—and it is the most sacred duty she performs toward him; then she nourishes his mind with strong, sound teachings and trains his character in truthfulness and honesty, planting in his heart the seeds of courage and enterprise, schooling his steps in wisdom, virtue, dignity, and self-respect, and showing him that he must rely upon himself in all his doings. And the grandest thing a mother does for her country is to instill the spirit of patriotism into the spirit of her boy, who feels from his tenderest years—from the first step he takes upon the stage of life—the great responsibility laid upon his shoulders toward his homeland. How great was the saying uttered by Napoleon the First: The mother that rocks the cradle with her right hand rocks the world with her left."