In God's Keeping

"On the feast of independence, the hero of independence died." So ran the mourning notice of "Beirut al-Massa."

At noon on Thursday the 23rd of this month, the late lamented Abdul Hamid Karami — former Prime Minister, and a fighter for the nation these forty years — passed to the abode of eternity. All Lebanon wept for him, and Tripoli bore his body to the grave in a solemn national funeral, in which His Excellency the President, the presidents of the Chamber of Deputies and of the Council of Ministers, the members of the government, and the masses of the people took part. The government proclaimed three days of mourning, and the flags were lowered over the official departments and the Arab and foreign legations.

The deceased was born in 1893, into a family that has held the office of Mufti in Tripoli for 400 years, and he himself assumed the muftiship in his youth. He was governor of the North under the Daouk government after the First World War, and he was among France's bitterest enemies, so that they made him their foe for a quarter of a century. In 1943 he recognized Lebanon on condition that it be Arab and independent. He was the only man the French arrested in 1943 without his being a minister. He headed the cabinet for six months, which won him the name of "the righteous ruler." He led the Lebanese opposition in the National Liberation Bloc.

"The Woman's Voice," grieved by the painful news, calls down showers of mercy upon the departed, wishes his family consolation, and wishes his homeland a successor who will believe what he believed and do what he did.