The Greatest Woman in History!!

In the last issue we published a delightful article by the writer Emil Ludwig on the ten great women of history... The correspondent of 'The Woman's Voice' thought to put this question to the ladies of Lebanese society, to see their opinion on the great woman... and we observe that the notion of greatness held by some of them is not Emil Ludwig's notion.

The Editors

The esteemed magazine 'The Woman's Voice' has addressed to me its question about the woman I believe to be the greatest in the world, and why. Would, my kind questioner, that I were able to know all the ideal women in the world; then I could prove to the man who is accustomed to look upon woman with the eye of deficiency that woman is far closer than he to attaining the ideal, despite this tumultuous life in which she struggles. But I am, no doubt, utterly ignorant of that great number; and the nearest of them to my thoughts at the present moment is Margaret Mitchell, the great writer who lately left this mortal world after an automobile accident that struck her without intent; the driver who caused her death was the first to walk in her funeral, sad and sorrowful, and he declared repeatedly that he wished he had been taken in her place.

I consider Margaret Mitchell the model of the ideal woman, for she is the mother, the wife, the writer, the lecturer, and the worker in the field of humanitarian service. And I have wished to set her as an example before our kind ladies, that they may know that a woman's life does not end with her marriage, as is the case in our East, but begins with it.

In history there are women's faces that have perfumed history and left behind them a memory that cannot be effaced; each face has its own particular color, its own particular splendor, its own particular beauty, and no chapter of history or of society has lacked a woman's face of effective influence. But I prefer to pass over all these radiant women's faces of ancient history, to pause a moment before a noble, devoted face that the modern history of women will remember with all respect and reverence — I mean the face of the venerable lady Huda Hanim Shaarawi.

What led me to prefer this leader was not any depth of learning or specialization in one of the arts or one of the higher studies; but she was the woman her homeland could not do without, at a time when this homeland in particular, and the Arab homelands in general, were in the direst need of active, devoted women's faces. I am not here to enumerate the virtues of Huda Hanim Shaarawi; I will content myself with mentioning some of the qualities gathered in her personality, which I myself observed at close hand: pure devotion, burning patriotism, astonishing courage, and breadth of spirit. May I then wish for our Arab countries radiant, devoted women's faces like the face of Huda Hanim Shaarawi? We are in the direst need of such faces.

You ask me about the greatest woman who has earned my admiration through history?

The women who have won my admiration through the pages of history by their unique merits are many, in East and West. There is no room here to enumerate their names. They have soared in the world of learning, of work, of politics, of society, of education, and of morals, and have far surpassed the merits of men in the fields in which they worked. In that is proof of woman's capacity for equality with man in all the fields of life, as the spirit of the age teaches.

Therefore I confine my answer to the mention of Queen Victoria, in that link of history which ties the beginning of the present age to the end of the past one.

For she proved that a woman is able to conduct the administration of the greatest empire history has known, with all pride and honor, without the affairs of state encroaching upon her duties as a wife, as a mother, and as the mistress of a family who manages her household well.

It was not the pageantry of kingship that arrested my eye, that I should single her out from modern history; what arrested my eye in her was the woman, and her capacity to sustain a vital and social activity equal to the activity and vitality of man in all fields.