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.