Woman's influence in the renaissance of peoples, and her influence in their decline, are equal in efficacy and force. For the inclinations of peoples, be they good or bad, do not take root in their being unless they take hold in the being of woman, she being their instigator and their inspirer.

The histories are the truest proof of her efficacy in the life of nations, in their developments and their upheavals. How many decisive engagements there have been in which woman had the manifest influence, and in which she drew, for many a nation, the dividing line between deterioration and defeat on the one side, and progress and victory on the other. The swift upheavals in the Arab East in these last years are proof of an intellectual maturity in woman and man alike, and proof of real revolutions fermenting in the Arab mind, and of an actual development in the principles and beliefs it accepts, which belong to the very core of the rational forces of the East. In consequence of this there have occurred changes in what the community will accept of conditions and situations whose evils it was heedless of in the past. Among them is the decision of those in authority to give woman her political right. For the community has come to believe that the presence of the wise leader directs those popular tendencies to the good of peoples, and that the presence of the wise woman in the ranks confirms and protects the foundations of independence, and stirs and fuses the surging forces that look toward progress.

There is no way, henceforth, to put out the torch of the shining truths, nor to suppress the life blazing in breasts. Development is inevitable

and actual in every living nation. And the nations of the East were not made to die, possessing as they do those characteristics and distinctions of nations which make them worthy of life rather than death — nay, possessing qualities that made them, at the dawn of history, a rising-place of civiliza-tions and a foundation of religions.

The old upbringing of the Eastern woman generated in her many qualities that do not accord with lofty character and do not befit the rising woman. Among these

qualities are cowardice, flattery, hesitation, weakness, and shrinking — qualities that lead to defeat and abandonment. They were as internal fetters upon the forces of her soul, which resigned itself to the old, degrading condition and accepted all the pain and abasement it contained.

Today, however, now that culture has spread among the various classes, most of these fetters have dissolved or come undone, and we now see the girl thronging to the houses of learning as the boy does, freed from her self-imposed fetters. And she has striven to free herself from those fetters whose undoing was not in her power alone, so as to be bound only by the bond of dignity and upright character — the bond that imposes duty, makes rights plain, forms the will, and whets resolve.

Woman has joined with man in smashing the shackles and opening the prison doors that were closed against the release of souls; and far be it that woman should ever return to them hereafter. The wise men of the nation have understood that when the waters rise they must overflow, and that if they are not turned to good and blessing they become a cause of destruction and ruin.

Let us all open our eyes, then, to the hollows we shall face on our difficult road, and let us know that woman's joining hands with man smooths the

rough roads that lie before us toward the rising.

Change and development cannot touch one side and not another; they must embrace all the sides and conditions of national life if they are to be useful and fruitful.

No wonder, then, that the old, corrupt condition with respect to woman has been renewed and changed, along with the other conditions, to accord with the wakeful, vigilant spirit of the age, and to agree and unite with the complete national consciousness that is awaited.

In peoples there is a great property, which is among the causes of their vitality, their wakefulness, and their revolt. This property is the obscure feeling by which they know their oppressors or their saviors. It is a strange faculty by which a people divines its good or its evil in whoever leads it or directs it. And when a people is able to know its own good, it has attained the degree of consciousness that guarantees it continuance in a dignified life.

From of old, the awakenings that followed submission would open upon great upheavals in all the conditions that concern man and woman alike.

And it is woman's duty today to unite with man in the national purposes, turning away from the discussions that waste time and bring no benefit, and to work with her fellow citizens to revive the national spirit, that it may beat in revolt against every enmity.

For the horizon of perception and knowledge among us has widened; the sea of life has risen to its height, troubled and roaring; and enthusiasm has flared in breasts, boiling and resounding. But princi-ples will not rise as we desire, nor the whirlwinds subside as we wish, if woman deserts the battle and is diverted by amusement from

[Boxed pull quote:] In the renais-sance to which we look forward we need a cultured, proud generation, other than the old generation; and none can present it to the homeland but a free, cultured, noble woman who has cast off the halter of the past and come forward with courage, strength, and competence, preparing the means of wakefulness and progress.

the field of duties and the work they demand. And how can woman henceforth neglect her