The Woman's Word

Only yesterday there closed, out of the Lebanese woman's past, a page blackened by the servitudes of ages long buried; and there slipped from her shoulders a burden that had weighed down upon her, holding her back from rising and from unleashing her energies for good...

Today the Lebanese woman stands erect, and never again will her eye flinch from humiliation or belittlement, because Legislative Decree Number Six, amending the election law, gave the educated woman the right to elect and to be elected... And this decree, despite the partial deficiency in it that stirred woman's anger, was a gracious gesture from those in authority, for which the Lebanese woman will know how to express her deep thanks; nor will she heed the looks of astonishment and displeasure that the reactionaries aim at her, grudging her even this truncated right! For these opposing elements are nothing but the remnants of extinct centuries, now making their last convulsion, so that everything new and liberated, suited to the spirit of the twentieth century, may take their place.

And let no one suppose that the Lebanese woman, as she breathes a sigh of relief after the great effort she has expended and the many obstacles that blocked her paths, imagines that she has now reached the end of the road and that she may lay down her head and rest... For this first stage she has crossed is only a “touchstone” for testing her real capacities. Would she dare, do you think, to plunge into the battle without full knowledge of what is required of her — so that she would be like a soldier who goes into the fray fully armed... while not knowing how to shoot!!

Let us regard this great event in our history merely as a starting point, from which woman sets out to know her true self and to work at giving herself a comprehensive political education — one that will make of her a conscious citizen who understands her country's cause, who can tell one citizen from another, the sincere from the self-seeking, supporting the first kind and fighting the second.

And here precisely the mission of “The Woman's Voice” stands out. It feels, in all sincerity, its responsibility, and the unique service it must render as the only magazine that carries woman's torch on high, that its light may reach out to the world. For this it pledges to its gracious readers that it will prepare for them whatever it can lay hands on of guiding lessons in the general political culture that our school programs — and even our local press — so sorely lack; and it opens its heart in welcome to useful, instructive contributions, that they may be sound provision for her on the day the call sounds for her to choose the representatives of her people and the defenders of her nation's dignity.

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Let my sister woman trust in her own sincerity and her own capacities; and let her know that once she has spoken her conscious word, joined to sound knowledge, her voice will ring out clear and strong, and victory will surely belong to those she supports, not to those she turns away from.