The Land of Civilization and Progress?!

Is this a truth, or sheer fantasy?

Does it accord with reality that we are the land of radiance and light?

Or is it a pride storming through our heads, that will allow us nothing but excess and nothing but obstinacy?

How long shall we remain grown-up children? And when shall we sing the deeds of our own generation, not the deeds of ancestors who died a thousand, two thousand, or three thousand years ago? Do you think it an honorable trade, this trade of stealing other people's glories, this trade of singing the genius of the conquerors of the seas and of those who pictured the idea in letters, beginning with Cadmus and ending with Khalil Mutran?

Shall we never have our fill of deceiving people and deceiving ourselves?

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What civilization is this, and what progress? Nay, where is the radiance and where is the light?

Some of us have studied in the universities of the world, and it seems to me that afterward they disdained to mix with the "common herd" and withdrew into their ivory towers — where they remain still. And that is culture! Behold, the radiance travels "vertically," not horizontally.

Here is one company that enjoys everything, and whose peace of mind is not troubled that a nation — its own — should be deprived of everything.

One company has the lights and the cascades of water, the motorcars and the airplanes; and a toiling company finds no water to wash the grease and dust from its face and hands, and if a man sits down to a dish to put a morsel in his mouth, or his children gather around a faint light to write out tomorrow's lessons, the current is cut and darkness spreads over all.

Here is a company that has forgotten how people walk on their own feet! And a company whose life — in the hour it walks the streets of this happy capital — lies at the mercy of the daughters of Azrael, who cut off heads and sever the hands and feet of pedestrians the way one kills — dear reader — a fly or a noxious insect!

And here is a company that touches something like the ring of that "genie," and telephone wires are installed in his house and in the houses of his father and his brother and his father-in-law and all the men of money. And a company such that, should the angel of death hover over its house, its cry for help will not reach a doctor until it pays 400 piasters for the fare of a car!!

This is the homeland of civilization and progress!!

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This women's magazine, The Woman's Voice, in Lebanon, calls upon the men of genius to bestow a spark of their genius, of their kindness, upon their countrymen here in Lebanon; and it calls upon women to close their ranks and put an end to this chronic ulcer, the problem of water. In this very season last year I published in the newspaper Beirut an appeal to them under the title "We Are Thirsty," and they answered my appeal and carried the voices of thousands of housewives to the authorities.

The men in power heard our cry, and here they are working to obtain justice for us from the water company. Then the committees were formed, and now they are thinking of withdrawing the concession from the company and making the Municipality of Beirut "custodian" of a vital element of our life.

O men of our Lebanese government, and O men of the higher committee, we beseech you in all humility and all respect to count to ten before you venture upon a measure that would place the life of all the inhabitants of the capital at the mercy of departments that have as yet given no proof of understanding that they are "trustees" of people's lives.

It is a disgrace to an advanced homeland that water and light should be monopolized within it. But — now that the days of deliverance draw near — would it not be well for us to find the wise and ideal formula for securing the water supply?

Is it wisdom that the Municipality of Beirut should become adversary and judge at one and the same time? The water company wronged us, so we appealed to the authorities; if we now hand our affair over to the "authorities" of the Municipality, to whom shall we appeal? To whom? Is there no sound ruling to be had? — and may your reward be with your Lord.