The most important thing that reveals the advancement of social education in a nation is the condi-tion of the individual in the roads, the streets, the shops, and the vehicles of transport — there, out-side the houses, where individual struggle, perpetual movement, and constant dealings among people prevail; where the crowding grows dense and the causes of quarrel arise; there selfishness plays its part, and tempers and characters appear in their clearest form.

In the salons, however, and at ban-quets and parties, a man usually puts on the garb of refined delicacy and utmost courtesy; he wears his finest attire in appearance, conduct, behavior, and habits.

Here, though we may find specimens of splendid social polish, we cannot judge by them the advancement of social education among the common people.

In Turkey, apart from the high refinement you find among the upper classes, you find a rich refinement — perhaps unique — among the individuals of the people at large.

We find it among the children of the street, among the drivers of motorcars, in the tram, the automobile, and the boat, and in every place where feet crowd and movement abounds.

No driver races another driver; no child raises his voice in abuse; no children roam neglected through the quarters and alleys; no pas-

senger disturbs his companion or shoulders his way against him to find himself a seat; no young man points to his brawny forearms, threatening and promising his fellow the coming battle.

You hear no raised voices among those who converse, no violent din among the vendors, no shouting and threatening and menace.

Nor do you see there idlers sitting on the sidewalks to play backgam-mon and amuse themselves.

Rather, every movement proceeds in calm and peace. And every question finds someone to answer it — answering you with a smile, explaining to you clearly, serving you with good grace, from the highest classes to the humblest.

Every stranger sometimes needs to put questions, to inquire about the landmarks unknown to him in a country not his own; in Turkey he never lacks the well-mannered answerer and the fitting guide, courtesy having lent his face a rare gentleness that invites friendliness and reassurance.

And there, on the beautiful shores of the Bosphorus, where the magnificent palaces speak the grandeur of the Sultans, woman stands beside man, in the early mornings and in the evenings, carrying her work bags, waiting to go where she works at man's side; she stands with all propriety, competence, and dignity to board the boats that ply the waters — waters which, it was said

only yesterday, had swallowed the bodies of freemen and fighters.

The boats ply there, coming and going, carrying the many hundreds of working men and women, and strollers, men and women alike, of a people that has learned the meaning of freedom, whose sensibility learning and education have refined until it grew delicate and clear, in harmony with the features of beauty — the outspread beauty of nature, which no beauty surpasses.

I would contemplate the faces of the elderly women, searching among them for those who only yesterday, like their sisters in the Arab East, dragged the chains of servitude and suffered under the absurd customs that fettered all their powers.

I would examine the women's faces, hoping to see among them the heroines of "The Wretched Women," the novel about Turkish women written by Pierre Loti, the well-known French writer.

Or perhaps I might see their fellows or their kinswomen, and so remember the feeling they shared — the feeling of pain at the pre-vailing degradation — that grew in the hearts of the first company of awakened Arab women

in the recent past, after that same feeling had awakened in the hearts of the Turkish women, the first in

A coat... winter 1950...

Designed and tailored by Jacques Heim, Paris, who has named it the:

Clé de Fa

(Exclusive to The Woman's Voice)