holder of the highest diplomas, she has risen above keeping to

the house, caring for the children, and attending to the husband, so long as it is within her power to employ someone to perform all these tasks and duties in her stead — which means that the situation has not changed between the good illiterate mothers who reared us and the ignorant maidservants who rear our children. The range of thought in our milieu has thus become narrow in scope, because the learning the schools instilled in us was not joined by a breeding of its kind in our homes; hence this confusion which we meet in everything that man and woman undertake in their private and public doings.

Woman must take up the fight against illiteracy in every corner of Lebanon and of the Arab countries without exception, so that our venturing to storm the field of politics may not be a kind of imitation of man. For if there is to be no renewal in ideas, opinions, and deeds, then it is better for us not to advance, lest we widen the field of complaint and ruin instead of mending it, and demolish private family life without being able to build public social life.

Mrs. Evelyne Bustros hit the mark in her statement in the pages of The Woman's Voice, in answer to a question as to whether she intended to demand woman's political rights. She said that she saw no benefit whatever in woman's obtaining her political rights so long as she remains backward, because the illiterate man who used to cast a single vote would then have two votes or more, in proportion to the number of his illiterate womenfolk; the loss would thus be doubled, and we would have strengthened feudalism and lent it our aid at the very moment we meant to fight it.

Free compulsory education is by itself the first right with which the woman who demands her rights must arm herself. And if we form political and social missions and

allot them enormous budgets, it would better become us to allot the largest sum to the fight against ignorance, so that our dignity in keeping pace with the nations in outward appearance may agree with the inward truth.

Woman's responsibility is doubled; indeed, it is a perilous venture, for which she must arm herself with wisdom and learning, so that she may face the difficulties and overcome everything that would obstruct her good endeavors.

And if I said at first that this moral chaos is the result of the two factors of war and upheaval, this does not mean justifying the atti-tude of man and woman, who take it as a pretext for their inability to resist the laws of upheaval. For if we place in one pan the learning they have received, and compare the level of woman's thinking today and yesterday, and then place the tyranny of customs in the other pan, the first would outweigh it without a doubt — provided the

possessor of learning and thought is willing to use his knowledge to raise himself, subjecting his unruly inclinations to his mighty will.

Thus do the lofty gifts show themselves in the souls of the individuals who make up the whole, and the circle of improvement goes on widening until it embraces all around it. The humane principle prevails over everything else, the virtue of learning triumphs over the sweeping current of vice, and trifling with the virtues is no longer accounted a kind of perfection required by a counter-feit civilization.

Then the conscious woman stands against the current, using her culture and her wisdom to direct affairs as befits them and befits her dignity.

The present and the future are yours, young men and young women of today; and your nation awaits from you the raising of its level, by the resolve in your breasts and the strength in your youth.

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