At the September 21 Festival

The address of the Lebanese Women's League at the celebration of the renewal of the mandate of the President of the Lebanese Republic, Sheikh Beshara El-Khouri. It was delivered in the League's name by Mrs. Edvick Jureidini Shayboub, and in it the writer expresses the aspirations of the educated, awakened Lebanese woman, who knows her right in life, and knows how to claim it.

The Editors

My Lord, Your Excellency the President:

In the name of the Lebanese Women's League I raise to Your Excellency our warm congratulations, and it gladdens us to join our voice, on such a happy day as this, to the voices of our brother citizens, in expression of our loyalty and our respect. It gladdens us also that the Lebanese woman should be given the chance to say her word on this happy occasion.

The Lebanese Women's League, a spreading tree of this glorious era, has grown and its wing has gathered strength only under your good patronage. In its striving and its struggle it draws its energy and its strength from your attention to it and from the kindness and encouragement with which you have singled it out; it acknowledges this favor at every hour, and the least it can do is to proclaim it today, and to mingle its voice with the voices of the well-wishers, wishing for your person, and for dear Lebanon, eminence and glory.

The Lebanese woman, from her remotest past down to this age of ours, has never stayed her hand from fruitful, silent works, nor ceased from sowing the seeds of goodness and love in every corner of this homeland. In every field — culture, social life, humanitarian service, and child welfare — she has set down great works which, if they prove anything, prove her nature that loves goodness and sacrifice, and her sincere desire to render her country and her fellow citizens the noblest of services.

And this woman, Your Excellency the President — who yields nothing to her brother man in patriotism and devotion, and whose maturity and culture qualify her to stand with her brother man upon one and the same ground — finds it hard to bear that he should perform his national duty in full while she withdraws, set apart in her house, powerless to share even in the deciding of her own destiny! It is hard for her — she, the conscious, ardent citizeness — to remain wounded in her dignity, her right squandered, and to see the paths of equality remain, even now, closed in her face! Has she ever fallen short in the performance of a national duty, or failed in a task entrusted to her? And our independence, whose feast we keep today — did woman not have a hand in upholding it and making firm its pillars? Did she not bare her breast to the bayonets of the colonizer, and cry out in his face a terrible cry, demanding the freedom of her leaders, demanding the freedom of her country?

Such is the history of the Lebanese Women's League, Your Excellency the President — a history rich in honorable stands and noble deeds. And this League, which is still in the dawn of its life, looks to your new era with a long, deep gaze, flooded with beautiful optimism, hoping to obtain at your hands its rights in full, and to meet with every success and blessing for its constructive projects, which grow and flourish in the service of woman and child...

And we must assure Your Excellency that the Lebanese woman, in raising her voice with humility to claim her rights, understands in the depths of her soul how great is the first mission for which she was created. And she is certain that she stands ready to sacrifice all these rights the moment she feels that she has strayed from the performance of her first national duty — I mean the building of the cell, and the strengthening of her womanhood.

And woman in Lebanon, Your Excellency the President, has great confidence in your free, patriotic person; in your glorious past, and in the first valiant step you set down in the battle of independence, she has shining proof of the sincerity of your patriotism and the nobility of your aim. And for the sake of this confidence she wishes to affirm to Your Excellency that her first concern in this life is the catastrophe of sister Palestine, and that her first national duty is positive, effective participation — struggle and striving to restore peace to Palestine, and to restore Palestine to its homeless people.

And the hope is firm, Your Excellency the President, that your new era will fulfill the hopes of the Lebanese woman and strengthen her standing, so that she may come to have her right protected and her head held high.

Blessed be an era in Lebanon in which we keep the feast of absolute equality.