The Woman's Word

Only yesterday the Lebanese Chamber of Deputies approved the compulsory conscription bill. In that hour Lebanon was recording its first victory over the hesitation that has accompanied its life through several generations. And on the day the Lebanese government puts this bill of hers into effect, Lebanon will record its second victory — over fear and doubt, and over the defeatism that has made our national life meager and poor. And in the hour when the young men of this country march, foreheads high, figures erect, nerves calm, rank upon rank, to the trilling cries of mothers and wives and sweethearts, we shall then record our great final victory, and live in history as the great peoples live in history!

Our national life until today has been poor, and so there have been lacking in us the moral values that develop the fighting instincts in man and rear in him the spirit of struggle and of order; and the free, dignified life comes only to peoples that struggle, that are organized and trained. Military service, with all its rigor and discipline, develops these national dispositions in peoples and creates a new generation distinguished by the spirit of endurance and striving.

My sisters: I feel the outcry being raised in our homes, and the panic creeping into our hearts; and there reaches my ears the talk of certain people, saying: And why compulsory conscription?

For this reason I direct my word today, from this magazine, to the Lebanese woman wherever she may be, asking her to understand this question with a true understanding, and to appreciate the importance of this blessed step in our glorious national history — and thereby to prove her competence, and her worthiness of the free life for which we are struggling today.

Compulsory conscription is a national phenomenon in the nations that wish to live in dignity; and today, in this life of ours which has come to be threatened from every side, it becomes a pressing necessity which we must not ignore; nor should we listen to the weak among us who make their attempts to stifle the vitality of this nation...

We do not want for Lebanon military glories and great conquests, for Lebanon's mission in the world is better than conquests. It is the home of the authentic spirit, and we want it always a homeland of goodness for the right. But that which we want for Lebanon we do not want as a cowardly right, nor do we want Lebanon the home of a bewildered, despairing spirit.

We want Lebanon strong, gathering within it the virtues of spiritual strength, the virtues of firm character and of the national creed; and we want for Lebanon young men who stand guard over this clear sky...

Blessed be the youth of our country, on the day they hunger and thirst, and bear hunger and thirst with patience, and cross the mountains and the plains at a brisk march, in the cold and in the heat, making their bed on the bare earth in the open with their rifles and their guns...

On that day — the day we all stand upon the soil of our homeland, paying the tax of blood for every inch of our soil that is lost — the young men of our country will become heroes, and the mothers of our country the mothers of heroes, and our country will become a great country...