and said: poor woman among us — she is still an idle member of no importance in our Arab society, because she is deprived of her natural rights and of her freedom, which no one can deny her. Was woman created only to manage the affairs of house and family? And to remain ignorant and idle? No! She has rights, and duties toward her homeland, her people, and her society, like her brother man. So long as woman is able to manage her little house and supervise its economic and social affairs with precision and skill, and to direct the man to buy this and sell that, and, and, and... then it lies within her power to share with man in all his works and give her opinion on every subject. Yes, there was the past, and it held woman under restraint, and for centuries she remained ignorant and idle, not thinking that she was created to work at the side of her brother man in the service of her society and her homeland. Nor does the responsibility fall upon her alone; the greater share of it must be borne for her by her brother man, who was the stumbling-block in the path of her progress — through his own ignorance and the ignorance of those responsible

for her. For when the Westerner speaks of us, the first thing he looks at is woman and her position, and by it he judges us. Her ignorance, then, is a disgrace not to her alone; it extends to the man and to everyone responsible for the development and progress of his country! It is for our governments to help in the culture and education of our girls, and then to give woman her rights, that she may strive side by side with her brother man; and thereby the nation will rise and ascend to the rank of the living, advanced nations. And so long as our women are backward and ignorant, we remain at the rear of the procession, of no weight and no worth. For woman is the mother of man, and his first teacher and edu-cator — and despite the educated, cultivated women we have today, whose number is not small, we have a far greater number of ignorant, illiterate women crouched in their houses, knowing nothing of the life of society and of their country. The governments and the responsible men must hasten to open schools for boys and girls in every village of the dear homeland, making elementary instruction compulsory and free; and thus not twenty years

will pass over us before we see all our girls cultivated — and upon them depend the nation's progress and its renaissance. So, my brother man, if in the past you did not heed your duties toward the partner of your life, the time has come — and we in the latter part of the twentieth century — for you to stretch out a helping hand to your sister woman, that she may be a help and a support to you in the future for the realization of all your national hopes; and to cast against the wall all the hateful, backward traditions and rites to which our fathers and grandfathers clung, and which stood in the way of woman's progress in the past. As for you, my educated companion, the road has been cut open before you, and it is for you to pave it — by turning to your sisters in the city, in the village, and in every corner of the homeland, teaching them and training them in their duties, so that in the near future you may obtain all your demands. And I guarantee that we shall reach our rights despite all the obstacles that will stand in our way, with the help of the responsible and thinking men among us. May God fulfill these hopes.