There is no doubt that this question has taken on an importance that did not attach to it before woman was acknowledged to have political rights — though woman, in my eyes, was never on any day anything other than a citizen, with all the duties this quality imposes upon her and all the rights it confers upon her, rights that long remained wholly usurped.

And I was obliged to say wholly usurped, for the rights have not been given in full: the illiterate

woman who has been denied these rights is a citizen too, whose rights are still withheld from her; and thus these rights have remained partly usurped. I wish to declare, at the opening of this word of mine, that everything I shall say tonight on the subject of how I understand my duties as a woman citizen — and how I understand my rights as well — applies equally to the illiterate woman; and how I wish we could be done with any such

classification, that there were no room for the existence of illiterate men and illiterate women, and that we had carried out the spread of education in a form that reaches all the children of Lebanon and befits this homeland.

I said that this subject has, without doubt, taken on an importance that did not attach to it before, because people today have begun to look at woman through a lens other than yesterday's; for she was, from the official standpoint, on the margin of life, though from the actual standpoint she was otherwise. And people have begun waiting for woman to enter the very heart of life, as though she had never entered it, and watching to see what her conduct will be, to see whether she is worthy of occupying this new position, or whether she will fail in this experiment. On this basis it was natural that I should not take up the heart of the subject — how the woman citizen is to understand her duties and her rights — before addressing to her a passing word touching her personal conduct in this regard. It is a matter of formalities, but it is, as I see it, important in any case, in that it may give an opening to those who seek to disfigure this progressive step, which tends toward the equality of woman with man, to wage a campaign of blackmail and clamor against woman, if she does not grasp the importance of maintaining a sober and serious conduct in this delicate stage through which she is passing.

I say this because I know, among women, some who see the granting of political rights as a thing leading in truth to unbecoming displays of mannishness — truly unbecoming — or to excess in repudiating traditions which woman has not repudiated even in the most emancipated countries. Woman is adorned in her daily life by her natural delicacy, and her gentle sobriety casts over her a color of dignity that is welcome and obligatory.

I said in her daily life, and that indication of mine was deliberate, for I do not wish it to be understood from my word — having pointed to woman's natural delicacy and her welcome gentle