Miscellaneous News

★ The delegates of the Lebanese Union to the General Arab Union were the ladies Salwa Moumina and Anissa Najjar. Mrs. Najjar presented a brief report on her trip, mentioning in its text that the building of the Iraqi Women's Union, with its spacious rooms and its large garden, is the Iraqi government's gift to the Iraqi woman, and she wished that our government would follow the example of the Iraqi government. — The story of this club is as follows: the building was erected on the grounds of the Muthanna Club, the Arab nationalist club that was accused of foreign political leanings, whereupon the building was confiscated and presented to the Iraqi Women's Union. — I mention this story to draw the attention of the Union's members, so that it may pick out a place for itself to confiscate from one of the Lebanese parties, if the authorities do not hurry up and present us with a club of our own...

★ The Union's bureau examined the resolutions of the General Arab Union and what the Union must study, report upon, and act upon between now and the congress in 1953. They were as follows:

1 — Combating illiteracy
2 — Creating vocational schools for girls
3 — Reforming the prisons and reformatories
4 — Reviving the woman of the village
5 — Directing woman to the performance of her political and civic duties
6 — Encouraging national and Arab products
7 — Combating prostitution

★ At the Union's general session Dr. Salwa Nassar lectured on cosmic rays — their dangers, their benefits, and the experiments being carried out to understand them. The Doctor excelled in making the language of science easy for her listeners, in such a way that they asked the president for more lectures of this kind.

★ At the coming May meeting (the first Tuesday of May) the great writer and educator Miss Rose Ghorayeb will lecture. The Union invites everyone to hear Miss Ghorayeb, especially as her subject is the problem of the hour, "Woman's Political and Civil Rights."

★ The Union received a warm letter from Dr. Hanna Rydh, president of the International Women's Union, in which she invites our union most cordially to attend the Congress of Peace and Education in Naples, and asks it to propose whatever studies it wishes the congress to examine within its theme. It is known that the Union's delegate to the recent Bern congress, Mrs. Makkawi, together with Egypt's delegate Mrs. Nabarawi, had secured the placing of the question of the Palestinian refugees among the studies of that congress.

Accordingly the peace committee, composed of the ladies Anissa Najjar, Faiza Antiba, and Loreen Shoucair, is preparing a thorough report on the social and educational situation in Lebanon and on the refugees.

★ The Mouwasat Charitable Society, headed by Mrs. Ramziyya al-Hawja, has joined the membership of the Union.

★ The Union requests the headmistresses of schools to furnish its bureau with statistical tables of the number of certificates they have granted from the founding of their schools until today, so that we may possess a trustworthy record of women's education in Lebanon.