The Woman's Voice puts out this issue confident that it is fulfilling, in the best possible way, the mission for which it came into being. Whoever has followed the stages of this magazine over the past five years marvels at the leap it has made: from a simple bulletin treating matters treated by the daily newspapers, to an elegant magazine treating the subjects that concern woman, one that has become a field for the great women of letters of the Arab world.

The Woman's Voice is a magazine of mission, undertaken by the Lebanese woman — a mission of thought, conviction, and freedom. It cannot be, and must not be, anything other than a mission. We never wanted it to be a showcase of fashions and aristocratic expenditures, nor did we want it to be an amusement with which a woman fills up her idle hours; we wanted it to be a noble mission carrying to woman the endeavors of human thought. We wanted it a magazine of civilization, culture, science, letters, and art. We wanted it a necessity woman cannot do without. For the sake of all this, The Woman's Voice brought out its special issue on UNESCO, and today it brings out this issue on the occasion of the women's conferences in Beirut.

We apologize to many of our women writers that we were unable to publish their articles in this issue; the editors were obliged to forgo the magazine's familiar sections and many of the reportages.

Our next appointment: the special "Mayy" issue.