"The Woman's Voice" Questions Our Leaders of Thought: With His Excellency Dr. Salim Haidar and with Mr. Fuad Sarruf

Minister of National Education, Public Health, and Social Affairs. An inspired poet, and a cultured, patriotic young man who handles the affairs of his three ministries with the wisdom of elders and the resolute awareness of youth. (*)

Q — Is Your Excellency one of the poets of the modern schools, or do you prefer classical poetry to them?

A — I object to the form of the question, for the school does not create the poet; rather, the true poet is the one who creates a school. And "the classical school" has become a general, vague term, which must be defined. I am a poet of renewal, but I keep faith with the spirit of the Arabic language and with its foundations. Renewal is a duty, in meaning and in form, on condition that we preserve the base — which is that we write Arabic, not a foreign language in Arabic letters.

Q — What is your view of the fate of the rising Lebanese generation, pulled this way and that by multiple intellectual currents? What practical means do you propose for drawing together the points of view that these currents create?

A — The multiple intellectual currents that pull at the rising Lebanese generation are a natural result of Lebanon's passage from the Mandate to independence, of its literature's passage from imitation to creation, and of the openness of Lebanese society to the ideas of the world. Drawing points of view together is not done by rebuke, nor by favoring one idea and championing it; it comes by way of studying these theories and putting them to the touchstone of the test. And I believe that the mission Lebanon has borne since the earliest ages — the mission of liberty and understanding — is sufficient to ensure that all tendencies will, in the end, be refined in its keeping into a sincere desire to serve thought and truth.

Q — A quick glance at our students' capacities in the Arabic language reveals a painful truth: these students find the foreign language — English or French — the easier, and throw themselves into studying it and going deep into it. As for our students who take up the learning of Arabic with longing and desire, they are a tiny few, whom special circumstances have surrounded. What, in your view, are some suggestions for endearing Arabic to its children and strengthening them in it?

A — The problem of the Arabic language, like all thorny social problems, is a problem of love. We must cultivate in our children love of the Arabic language, its literature, and its heritage, so that they take to it first from the motive of love, not from the motive of utility nor from the motive of ease. This does not prevent the scholars of the language from continuing their efforts to make the methods of teaching easier. And Arabic, contrary to appearances, is developing toward ease: all the archaisms and anomalous derivations are disappearing one after another, new terms are being created, however slowly, and the general rules are becoming consolidated. And general taste — the taste of the people, or of the ordinary reader — has a great influence.

As for suggestions to endear the Arabic language to its children, they consist in following all the means the Westerners have used to endear their own languages: selections from easy Arabic literature, rich as it is in maxims and anecdotes, with explanations brought close to the understanding; the printing of books at reasonable prices; a turn toward school series in Arabic literature; and the enlisting of all the means of publication in this — the press, the radio, the phonograph record, the theater, the cinema, and the rest.

Q — There are those who say it is necessary to delay the introduction of a foreign language into the school program until the fifth elementary grade, when the student has gained some command of his Arabic. Do you support this view or oppose it?

A — The matter is relative; it depends on the method of teaching Arabic. I find no objection to introducing the foreign language from the very start, on condition that Arabic be given the first importance, so that the varied readings are in it, and the foreign tongue is a language and nothing more.

Q — What are the reforms that must be brought about in the Ministry of Education so that its schools reach a standard worthy of all our children?

A — The reforms are many, and they are of two kinds. The first is easy: it concerns the organization of the affairs of education and of educators, and the related material interests of officials and of those concerned. Legislative Decree No. 25 has accomplished most of these things; what remains is application, and that is a continuous labor.

(*) These questions were put to His Excellency before woman obtained her absolute political right.

Vice President of the American University of Beirut for Public Affairs, and in the front rank of the leaders of Arab thought. He was head of the editorial board of al-Muqtataf in the days when al-Muqtataf stood at the summit of the Arab press. His many works bear a sober scientific stamp and an engaging style.

Q — What is your view of the fate of the rising Lebanese generation, pulled this way and that by multiple intellectual currents? What practical means do you propose for drawing together the points of view that these currents create?

A — I do not fear the multiple intellectual currents, so long as those who think have been fortified with the rules of sound thinking and with intellectual honesty. Multiple intellectual currents are the inevitable result of giving free rein to freedom of thought and freedom of opinion. What ought to be feared is ignorance, which leaves the mind prey to passions rather than logic; the interdiction of thought, whereby people become like members of the herd; and intellectual harlotry, which dresses matters up as other than they truly are, and from presenting them in a distorted form arrives at crooked conclusions.

And I know of no means of raising the young to take the better of opinions and the more useful of actions except an education in which the cultivation of the mind and the refinement of the soul proceed under a single rein. The cultivated mind sets forth in search of the truth, weighed down by no fetter save the fetter of longing for it, and the fetter of the principles which thinkers, philosophers, and men of science have distilled through the passage of the ages for the discovery of truth and the assurance of it. The refined soul aims at the good, and its exercise, like the exercise of the mind, is a labor that does not end so long as life lasts; and the joining of the two, in a world whose bonds are all connected, is something demanded by this tremendous power which science has placed in the hands of its sons — if they use it well, it is abundant good; and if they use it ill, it is destruction and ruin. This is the greatest struggle, cast in the mold of our modern world, and I know of no shortcut or smoothed road that leads to it.

Q — What are the principal requirements of the successful journalist? And how is one to attain them?

A — Who is the successful journalist? We must define him before we examine his qualifications. If the successful journalist is he who brings out a widely circulated paper, without regard to the means by which he attains that wide circulation, then I have no answer to the question. But if the successful journalist is the man who presents to his readers, every morning or every evening, a miniature picture of the world, gathered from the various sources of news, bringing into relief what is, in his judgment, worthy of relief, discarding the superfluities, or holding them back, or abridging them; who adds to this an opinion founded on wide knowledge and sound judgment concerning the major problems; and who sets all this forth in an arrangement that pleases the eye, thereby making good circulation a foundation for freedom of opinion — then in my view his qualifications, in the first rank, are truthfulness and accuracy in reporting the news, honesty in expressing opinion, and the aim of the public good. But the successful journalist is a man of a craft, over and above being a teacher or a general guide, and the secrets of his craft are skill in ferreting out the news, soundness of judgment as to its value, putting forward what ought to be put forward of it and holding back what ought to be held back, and setting it forth in a correct, easy style and in a form that arrests the reader. Most of these qualifications are attained by study and experience, and the schools of journalism are competent to train students in them. It may be said that the journalist is "born," not "made"; and there is no doubt that a company of the greatest journalists were natural, self-made journalists. But study in the schools of journalism, and training in its arts and its means, smooths the road to success for most students and levels countless difficulties — especially since modern journalism is not news and articles alone, but is also printing, paper, pictures, administration, sales, subscriptions, advertisements, and promotion; and these are all matters for which the journalist is not "born" fitted, but which he must study, train in, and master in their methods.

Q — Has the Lebanese press reached a high level? And do you believe that the abundance of daily papers in a small country like Lebanon multiplies the benefit, or lessens the importance of the respected papers among them?

A — What is the high level? Is it the number of copies of a paper sold? Is it the number of its pages? Or the abundance of its pictures? Or the elegance of its printing and production? Or the extent of its political and social influence, or the degree of its independence of opinion? If you will be so kind as to answer these questions, you may arrive at a balance in which to weigh advancement, or a gauge by which to measure the rising or falling of the level.

It is well known that the London Times has fewer pages than the New York Times, yet it is not inferior to it in coverage of the news that matters, and the prevailing opinion is that it is the greater of the two in political effect. Before the Second World War the Daily Telegraph came out in many pages every day; when the quantity of paper available to the newspapers in Britain was restricted, it began to appear in four or six pages — but that did not lower its level; rather it moved its editors to cast aside banal talk, prolixity without profit, and enormous headlines, and it remained thereafter a daily paper in the front rank, in news and in opinion. And by this standard other aspects of the newspaper trade may be measured.

The papers of Lebanon, like the papers of every country in the world, vary in most of these qualities; but every day I see in them what testifies to skill in gathering the news and adroitness in presenting it, and every day I read in them editorials, or articles published under special headings, and I admire the opinion or the guidance. And many as they are, they pass through many hands; and were the milieu larger and the demand greater, many of these papers could reach the rank of the front line by whatever measure you applied to them.

And so long as the multiplicity of papers arises from the desire of every holder of an opinion to make his paper a means of expressing his view on the questions of the nation and the world, and so long as its owner remains precise in reporting the news and honest and sincere in expressing opinion, then abundance is beneficial — even if it is a strain on the pocket of him who cares to read them all, or most of them. Many a paper of small circulation and imperfect production contains all that could be wished of opinion and guidance. There is therefore no place for the question about the abundance of papers and whether it "lessens the importance of the respected papers," for the quality of being "respected" is relative; and the paper that does not find a sufficient number of people who count it "respected" and buy it in order to read it will soon find its means of livelihood straitened, and cease publication.

In any case, a multiplicity of papers owned by individuals is better than that a single individual should control multiple papers.

The second kind is harder, and it is in two parts. The first part is purely educational, and we shall work to realize it: the amendment of the curricula of instruction, so that instruction is not a means of stuffing the brain with particular information, but an instrument for forming a good citizen, who knows his duties toward himself, toward his homeland, and toward human society, and who makes of his learning a ladder to serious work.

The second part concerns building: we must give attention to the construction of the school, so that it satisfies, first, the conditions of health, and then the conditions of beauty; for cleanliness and order are two powerful factors in the formation of character, and beauty in general is a lofty aim which we must not overlook. And how can the young be raised in buildings at whose sight the soul recoils, and at whose smells, in some of them, the chest tightens?..

We have opened the door: Legislative Decree No. 25, which organizes the Ministry of National Education, abolished, as of the beginning of 1954, all school rents, placing them upon the shoulders of the municipalities and the local people, and stipulated that schools must be built at the government's expense. In this way we shall have used the government's money for building, not for rent.

Q — Do you read the magazine "The Woman's Voice"? And what are your observations on it, as a women's magazine that carries to the Arab woman a cultural mission, intellectual and social?

A — Yes, I read The Woman's Voice. I have read it since it first appeared, in the days when it was a newspaper. And I believe that this fine magazine is worthy to bear the name of the Lebanese woman, who takes part in raising the level of society, and in public life, with sincerity and ardor. I find nothing in this magazine to reproach that would deserve mention.

Q — Do you support the Lebanese woman by giving her her political rights in full, or by installments?

A — We have answered this question in practice: we gave woman her political rights in full, and I take pride that I was the most ardent of enthusiasts for it. And I hope that woman's voice will rise beneath the dome of Parliament, demanding, this time, not her own rights, but the rights of the wronged in life — the child, the invalid, the deformed, the feeble-minded, and the orphan... and that she will be the impregnable stronghold of morals and virtue.