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Yet we observe that the political right is the last of woman's rights to slip from man's hand, because it is the root of all rights, and he did not wish her to seize it easily, since with her seizure of it comes her complete liberation. So there arose around it a contest more violent than any that arose around any other; for from it springs the right of legislation, and legislation is the source of power, since it imposes upon the individual in society bonds he cannot overstep. And legislation, in both its kinds, divine and positive, has until now been accomplished at man's hand or through his agency; no wonder, then, if we find it wronging woman in certain respects — making her man's equal in loss and adversity, and preferring him above her in gain and prosperity.

Is it not natural, then, that woman should rise up the whole world over and call for a new and juster legislation, one that will secure her happiness more completely? And how is she to arrive at such legis-lation, if she does not take part in enacting it? For the man, however sound his intention, and were he an idealist, nay even a prophet, cannot feel woman's various needs except through his own person and his own sensibility — for one essential reason: he is not a woman.

And how is woman to reach this right, the right of sharing in the making of the law, if not by way of sharing in political life? Therefore she rose to demand it, in the light of that power of which I have spoken, springing from the proof of her existence through the works she performs toward society, whether in peace or in war, until in most of the advanced countries the political right was acknowledged to her, and she plunges into its depths with a sound mind and an enlightened insight.

So if we see the Lebanese woman earnest in fruitful social works, so that Lebanese society has become indebted to her for much of its progress; and if we see her waking to the voice of national duty, and

rising attentive to the call of her inner being in her homeland as a conscious human being, and a citizen with weight and standing beneath the sky of her country — resolved from this day forward not to amuse herself with husks, nor to be content with the meaner portion of the gain, nor with the commonplace among life's demands; determined that her knowl-edge of her own worth, and of the worth of the duty she performs in the building

of her nation, shall set a high price upon her — yes, if we see the Lebanese woman earnest to attain her political right, like her sister in the advanced countries, then that, upon my life, is glad tidings of a happy generation for Lebanon, of a bright future, and of a true renaissance.