In Society

★ Last month the parliamentary by-elections took place in the South, to elect a successor to the late leader Riad al-Solh.

In these elections there emerged, for the first time, various women's faces addressing the teeming crowds; and the women of the city of Sidon came out in a great demonstration in support of the al-Solh family's candidate — the like of which had never been seen in this conservative town.

At the head of the crowds was Miss Alia al-Solh, the eldest of the late leader's daughters; she spoke more than once, urging the crowds to defend her father's creed... and she showed a strong personality and a political maturity, though she is still under twenty years of age.

Also among those who mounted the platform and addressed the crowds were Mrs. Jahshan and Miss Saniyya Habboub.

This development, if it indicates anything, indicates that it is no longer possible to keep the Lebanese woman under tutelage and to shut one's eyes to her demands; her comprehensive awareness is no longer confined to the social and cultural sides of life, but has passed beyond them to the political side.

★ Mr. Charles Saad and his gracious wife, Mrs. Leila, have returned from a journey to Europe lasting a month and a half, in the course of which they passed through France, Germany, Italy, and England, and became closely acquainted with the various sides of life in those advanced countries. Mrs. Leila has promised The Woman's Voice a talk on her most important impressions concerning woman in general. We await this talk, and we congratulate Mrs. Leila Saad and her gracious husband on their safe return.

Last month Mrs. Edvick Jureidini Shayboub was appointed supervisor of the women's program at Radio Lebanon. This is the appeal that she addressed to woman at the opening of her first talk:

Madam:

"The Woman's Talk" is a program of your very own, presented by Radio Lebanon every Friday at a quarter past seven precisely...

The broadcasting station strives to present it to you at a high level of taste and usefulness, and to make it a necessity in the life of every lady, through what this program takes up of woman's spiritual and material needs, and of psychological and family problems and crises.

Madam:

Through this microphone we want to reach your heart, and your home, and everything that concerns you as a lady, and as a sound member of society... For this reason we want our voice to reach you, at this same appointed hour every week, bearing pleasure for you, and benefit. And we want your voice likewise to reach us, setting before us whatever you please to set before us of problems and observations, so that we may bring this program to its highest aim.

In "The Woman's Talk" we shall treat the matters that concern you. The kitchen, Madam, is one of the matters that concern you, and we have a talk for it; and a talk for fashion, and for education, and for health and childhood, and for the library. And music, Madam, is one of the arts that every lady ought to learn to savor; therefore it pleases us to offer you musical pieces that will bring gladness into your home at the beginning of the evenings...

In the third portion of The Woman's Talk, we are preparing broadcast sessions in which distinguished women will take part. We shall open these sessions with the series "Our Women in the Service of Society," summoning to the studio women personalities to tell us of their activity in the various sides of our social and humanitarian life...

And we shall strengthen our program by introducing new sections in which we shall take up the most important things that woman is doing in the world; we shall summarize women's books of real value; from time to time we shall review the effective factors that have helped bring about the renaissance of woman in the present age; and we shall lift the veil from noble women's faces that the years have folded away, of whom little is known while much remains unknown.

Our first aim in varying these programs, and in tinting them with every color, is to serve woman with a useful service, and to open wide horizons in which her mind may grow active, and which may direct her in the direction we desire for our women, and especially for our rising young generation.

So await, Madam, your own "Woman's Talk" at its appointed time — a quarter past seven in the evening, every "Friday."