A Truce??

In its previous issue this magazine published a remark by certain observers to the effect that the efforts of the committee charged with pursuing the question of women's rights may be "for show," and that the committee's members are convinced "in advance" that they will obtain nothing in the days ahead...

And there is a witty man of letters who came out with an article teasing the committee, in which he says:

"It appears that the Lebanese woman, after holding Woman's Week on the radio and in the press, and after sending the telegrams and petitions, has gone to sleep upon her confidence.... Women's rights are not obtained by this limp policy... And so long as the Lebanese woman prefers the salon to the street, I advise her to remain a 'mannequin' woman, toward whom eyes turn and hearts yearn..."

The new Cabinet has taken up the reins of government, and His Excellency the Prime Minister al-Oweini has delivered his ministerial statement — full of fine promises issuing from an intention finer still — yet he begrudged even the shadow of a promise, or the semblance of the shadow of a promise, to the good Lebanese women citizens, true of intention when they pledge.

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And now: why does woman insist on going down into this blazing furnace, the furnace of politics??

The answer: because she loves Lebanon! Because she says with that ancient poet:

By God, I know not — and truly I speak —
whether it is sickness that has come upon me from love of you, or sorcery!

She loves Lebanon and wants it to serve the covenants it signs! Why did Lebanon's delegate sign the charter of the San Francisco Conference? Why did he approve the Declaration of Human Rights? Indeed, why did he take part in drafting that Declaration, so that the world acknowledged his abundant merit? Do you suppose he — do you suppose Lebanon's delegate — signed this Declaration in order to tear it up afterward, into shreds??

The writer of these lines directs this question to Mr. Charles Malik.

I say that the Lebanese woman loves Lebanon and wants it truthful. What does it matter to her to plunge into this chaos, just as it does not matter to her to stand at the bedside of her child stricken by a grave disease whose contagion is feared!

Until a short time ago, I did not hold that woman must be made a partner in government, despite my having watched women in other peoples' countries electing and being elected. I believed in the Lebanese man; I was all but certain that he was fit to bring the boat safe to shore — I believed him strong of will, proud, steadfast in resisting the soul's inclinations and in fighting the worshippers of the golden calf!

I used to say:

When the Lebanese man reaches the summit whereby he becomes master in his own country, he will review

the efforts of the women of this land — those good efforts which the officials, all the officials, acknowledge — and will hand over to woman everything connected with health, with education, with public relief, with home industry, with the care of mothers and children, and with the supervision of the prices of foodstuffs — those matters which none but women serve, and over which none but women's hearts keep watch.

God gave His aid, and the Lebanese man reached the summit and became master in his own country.

And what have we seen? And what have we heard?

We heard a world expert say: a country of a million people with a hundred and fifty men who are millionaires — a country like this Lebanon of yours is not to be counted among the long of life!

As for what we have seen, it is this hideous partisanship; this chaos; this high cost of living that tightens upon the necks of the masters and mistresses of households; this extravagance in certain quarters — an organized extravagance no less ruinous than organized theft!! — and this organized parsimony in other quarters, a parsimony under which the mountain villages far from the summering centers are all but emptied of their young women and their young men.

For this reason I have come to say that woman must go down into the arena, to help with her judgment, with her arms, and with her devotion, to lift away this rubble, to clean the face of Lebanon and to wash the hearts of Lebanon's sons.

Forward, honored committee! I would grudge to see your efforts paralyzed by a love of "truce-making."