No wonder that, after successive waves of the light of thought had flooded the peoples of the East, those peoples awoke thereupon and became alert to their usurped rights, and rose to demand them, calling for national dignity, resisting every colonialism that fetters their independence. And no wonder, after this, that we have seen woman in the East generally rise and demand her own independence and her full rights.
For the awakening of peoples is nothing but the result of a dawn that gleamed on woman's horizon, from which the light spread and hope shone forth.
And it would be more fitting for us — we citizens — not to call this week Woman's Week, but the week of all-embracing national dignity. For the renaissance of woman in demanding her rights is proof of the completion of the general national feeling and of its saturation with the national pride that befits rising peoples as they demand life.
There is no dignity for a nation except through the liberation of all its members from psychological complexes that make those who bear them feel lowly and inferior to the members of other peoples.
Nor is the consciousness of its members complete until the feeling settles within them, at the height of fitness, for attaining individual and national pride; and until the national resolve grows strong to secure individual independence and national independence, and to defend and protect it with lifeblood and souls. And when souls join in covenant upon a work, they
endow it from their life with the strength for victory and success.
The independence of homelands is not gathered in unless its foundations rest upon impregnable bases of the covenant of souls, their union and their mutual understanding. And this is not accomplished unless all — males and females — are equal in rights and duties.
The denial of rights is an injustice that harms the whole and afflicts it with disintegration and deprivation; nay, it is a fetter upon its powers, stripping them of their possibilities and exposing them to the danger of decline or the danger of extinction.
And whoever neglects his right and accepts his fetter exposes himself to regression
and humiliation and the loss of the meanings of humanity within him. It does not befit an honorable person, nor a proud people, to hold back from taking their right, nor to leave it in the hands of the enslavers.
This week, then, is proof of the completed consciousness that has opened upon the feeling that equality among all individuals, men and women, in all rights and duties is a necessity; and proof of the understanding of responsibilities and of rising to shoulder their burdens, whatever their kind, whatever their toils and their dangers.
And if woman has risen today to carry all her responsibilities, she is performing a duty incumbent upon every living, advanced being in this existence.
There is no doubt that in woman's attainment of her full rights lies an all-embracing good for the nation; and there is no need to repeat the documents and cite the proofs that establish this, for they have become known to all, and none ignore them but those for whom illusion conjures up a danger that has no existence, should woman attain her political rights.
Every renaissance in the histories of peoples is stamped with a character that distinguishes it, and the renaissance of the East today is distinguished by the rising of its peoples for liberation and release, and by the revolt of its individuals to wrest all national rights from the colonizers.
And here we are, hearing the answering echoes across the horizons of the East of the breaking of fetters and shackles! — the melody welcome to every proud, patriotic, honorable, lofty soul.
And the renaissance of woman is nothing but the inevitable result of this noble feeling that independence of self and independence of homeland are a necessity. It is a repetition and a confirmation of the voices of the fathers rising from the depths of souls, demanding the plundered right.
And when movements of thought issue in true renais