In Society

★ On the eighth of last March the Ladies of Charity Society, presided over by Mrs. Rose, Madame Alfred Kettaneh, gave a bridge and tea party in the halls of the Hotel Bristol, bringing together a distinguished elite of diplomatic personalities and Beirut families.

As for this "Ladies of Charity" society, its aim is to bring relief to families in straitened circumstances and to lighten human suffering. For this noble humanitarian aim donations were collected, and the proceeds of this party were devoted to it with surpassing zeal and energy.

What drew notice was that the guests, and especially the ladies, appeared at this party as a marvel of taste and refined elegance, and the members of the society themselves went about among the guests, seeing to their comfort and good cheer.

★ From March 6 to 10 the club of the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) held an exhibition of national foodstuffs, at which all kinds of chocolates, biscuits, sweets, oils, and olives were displayed in attractive and appealing arrangements, and room was made for buying; the onlookers, who packed the hall to overflowing, went around the sections of the exhibition, tasting from this and from that as they pleased, and buying some of the items whose prices were noticeably far below the usual.

From a statement made by Miss Edma Bayoud, president of the Young Women's Christian Association, it appears that the aim of holding this exhibition was to enlighten public opinion and encourage people to buy national foodstuffs; these foodstuffs are thereby promoted, the demand for them grows, and consequently the number of working hands increases and unemployment is combated — unemployment being one of our most serious social and economic problems in Lebanon at the present time.

★ The Al-Nahda An-Nisaiyah society invited the refined public of Beirut to a tea dance at the Hotel Bristol. The proceeds of the party and the donations were allotted to strengthening the project of combating illiteracy by opening schools for girls in the remote Lebanese villages wherever government schooling is confined to boys alone.

★ On the eighth of last March the Lebanese artist Miss Salwa Rawda opened an exhibition of her paintings at the School of Higher Letters under the patronage of Mrs. Laure Khoury, wife of His Excellency the President of the Republic. This initiative is counted a new artistic conquest, by which Miss Rawda takes her place in the front ranks alongside the artists of the world.

Her kind of art is abstract — that is, "Art Abstrait." Before exhibiting in Lebanon, Miss Rawda met with dazzling success in Paris, where she pursued her artistic studies for two years and more at the hands of the great artists... The exhibition continued until March 24.