My Lord, Your Excellency the august President,

You have willed to crown our cere-mony with your presence, over and above the white hands of favor you have already extended to us, and so you have flooded us with a bounty we can no longer adequately thank. If we have no horses to offer you, nor wealth, and if our tongue falls short of expressing the respect we bear Your Excellency, then we offer you our hearts with all the love and gratitude they hold.

Allow me, then, to lay before Your Excellency and before this noble gathering the results of the work of the Lebanese Red Cross, whose honorary presidency you have condescended to accept, that you may see it has not strayed a finger's breadth from the program you traced for it, ever drawing inspiration from your will: to bring comfort to the poor of Lebanon in particular and to lighten their bodily and spiritual pains.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Six years ago the Lebanese Red Cross was founded through the energy of Her Ladyship Mrs. Laure El-Khoury, wife of His Excellency the revered President of our Republic, with the support of a choice company of Lebanon's devoted ladies and gentlemen. It has worked in a spirit of complete disinterestedness to help the sick who are in need, and the poor, without regard to sect or religion or politics, making its sole concern the comforting of the suffering, and striving to spread a spirit of concord and brotherhood among all the Lebanese, whatever their communities.

It opened twenty dispensaries, distributed through all parts of the Republic, for the free medical treatment of the sick poor. These dispensaries are run by committees of ladies who supervise the work of treatment and first aid and the distribution of the foodstuffs and clothing sent by the central

Last week the teachers of the elementary school of the Lebanese Women's League, together with the pupils of the third and fourth grades, made a historical excursion to Beiteddine, where the pupils saw for themselves what they had studied in history about the palace of Emir Bashir al-Shihabi — the beauty of its carvings, the fineness of its construction, and the skill of its workmanship.

The picture above shows the pupils with one of their teachers around the pool in the courtyard of the house before they entered the palace.

committee or by others for the assistance of the poor.

It founded the detachment of mobile dispensaries, which three times a week visit the distant villages that have no doctors, carrying medicines, with a doctor and three nurses to give relief to the sick poor.

It established a fully stocked pharmacy containing all drugs, with a completely equipped laboratory, to supply all the dispensaries with the necessary medicines and treatments and the required examinations.

It founded the Junior Red Cross branch, so that the spirit of the Red Cross may spread among the young in all the Lebanese schools and beyond them, and they may grow up in a spirit of forbearance, tolerance, concord, good works, and freedom from fanaticism.

It opened workrooms in Beirut, Tripoli, Zahle, and Sidon to prepare all the clothing needed by the little ones of the men of the army and by the poor.

Feeling the country's need of educated nurses holding a legal diploma, it established in 1946 a school for teaching the art of nurs-ing in all its branches, in which the lessons are given by men and women doctors renowned for their scientific attainments, and which graduates every year a number of nurses and assistant nurses.

To date this school has graduated:

First — seventy-nine assistant nurses, who studied one year; twenty-two of them finished this year.

Second — thirty registered nurses, who studied two years, at the end of which they successfully passed an examination before an exam-ining board of doctors, teachers, and the director of the school, earning the nurse's certificate of the Lebanese Red Cross; twelve of them finished this year.

Third — twenty nurses who obtained the certificate of the Lebanese Government, seven of them finishing this year. This government certificate is granted to nurses holding the Lebanese Red Cross certificate in nursing after a third year of study and practice, at the end of which they take an examination before an examining board of seven members: one from the Ministry of Health, another from the Ministry of National Education, together with the chief doctor of the Lebanese Army, the director of the Red Cross, the school's doctors, and its directress. Whoever among them passes the examination before the board with distinction is granted the government's certificate in the art of nursing.

The nurses' school has several branches, among them:

First — the first-aid branch,