This is the month of the schools: every year in it they graduate for us a company of young women and young men, and push them out into the great school of life — at times provided with what they will need in it, at times empty-handed. It is thus a month of beginning for some, and for others a month of ending (read Miss Rose Ghorayeb's article beside this column).
The students of one of the American colleges recently addressed a question to hundreds of the leading men of thought and politics in the country, asking them what advice they would wish to offer the graduates. The newspaper the New York Times published a number of the answers; here are some of them:
Dean Acheson, America's Secretary of State, said: "You are on the threshold of entering a treasury of minds, which is the touchstone of our civilization. Enter it with eagerness and enthusiasm. And if you come out of it trained in tolerance, having acquired the spirit of criticism and of balanced judgment, you will be worthy of the opportunities you have now obtained."
Harold Ickes, the former Secretary of the Interior, contented himself with saying: "Do not be afraid."
Trygve Lie, Secretary-General of the United Nations, said: "Understand and help the United Nations in its struggle to prevent the outbreak of a third world war."
As for George Marshall, who today heads the American Red Cross, he said: "Sincerity, uprightness, and tolerance are, in my view, the first requirements for acquiring a strong and excellent character. They are the qualities that all of us must practice in our daily lives."
The aim of the modern woman is to equal man not in rights alone, but also in personality, in thought, and in cultural production; to rise from her present condition, which confines her within the circle of existential needs, to a higher condition in which the ideal human life becomes possible for her — the life of creative activity.
But the woman of today — everywhere — still groans under the nightmare of long generations of enslavement. Those who look to the past to draw from it the means of woman's emancipation are mistaken, for the laws of yesterday and its realities alike conspire to hem woman in and to curtail her freedom. Today people's view of woman, in their conscious minds and their unconscious alike, is still the view of the ancients, who considered her a sex midway between the child and the man, a machine for childbearing and for the service of the stronger sex in the form of husband and son, possessed of a narrow, limited world that extends no further than amusing the man and doting on the children. This nightmare forms a powerful barrier preventing her equality with the other sex, however far she may go in learning and culture, because it weakens her confidence in herself and drives her to believe in her own weakness.
One of the merits of the curricula of instruction in the countries from which we take our own is that they make no distinction between boy and girl, but demand of both the same efforts and the same examinations for obtaining the same diplomas. This utopian equality on the school bench collides with a contrary current outside the school — at home and in society — which strikes the girl in her faith and demolishes her hopes and her dreams.
Yet among the women of today there are those who listen to souls filled with faith, ahead of their age in thought, looking toward a new age and a new freedom; and, after the example of Joan of Arc, such a woman hears voices strange to her surroundings calling to her and saying: "Win your freedom! And here is the way to it:
"First, a profession. Every woman and every man must arm themselves with a profession. Whoever has no profession is a defenseless parasite. Likewise the woman without a profession is a defenseless parasite. We are in an age of upheavals and rapid transformations, in the face of which nothing stands firm but self-reliance. In olden times there were privileged classes among men whose members relied on their privileges and regarded parasitism as a natural thing. But modern times have taught people, more than before, that conditions do not last and that privileges are liable to vanish.
"Second, culture that continues throughout life. The cultured person has many marks: among them physical exercise; among them moral discipline and refusal to be led by emotion; among them soundness of taste and an understanding of the secrets of beauty. Perhaps