of wretched humanity... Madame Curie was unique among her people in those days; but I fancy that the European mentality has evolved a great deal, so that the greater number of Western women today think as this scientist thought, and hold that jewels are the work of the old, dead past — that the woman who leans upon them only displays her silliness and her shallowness, and that liberation from them is shining proof of the progress and advancement of peoples.

How it would have grieved Madame Curie and her like to know that we, here in the East, still set store by jewels, and still think of their importance when preparing for marriage!

The woman in the West understood long ago that matter may not be made the measure of the worth of man or woman, and that riches will never be the pivot of the happy life.

She understood that what is

measured by the naked eye holds no distinction for her; rather, the good — all the good — lies in what the inner soul touches and the tender, beating heart feels.

The mission of the woman in the West is a mission of cooperation with man, not of rivalry; a mission of the defining of responsibilities and the safeguarding of individual freedom, in an atmosphere of common cooperation.

Search as you will: you shall not find a cultivated woman in Europe in whose eyes are mirrored that limpness and that stagnation, or who suggests that surrendered dependence before the turnings of the days.

These weak human appearances have been exchanged for a vitality that knows no bound, and an awareness whose roots have spread into every walk of life. The woman in the West is, beyond all dispute, the better part of her society: upon

her man relies for rearing the young generation in endurance and fortitude... in confidence in oneself and confidence in others. Upon her rests the reliance for carrying the regulations of the state among the divergent classes of the people.

If she undertakes some reform, she pours her heart and her mind into its accomplishment; if she ventures upon some project, she springs forward with all her powers to complete it.

The woman in the West feels that she is the great trustee over the safety of the state and the safety of the rising generation.

And her mission is nothing other than a mission of faith in the essence of life, not in its husks; faith in the fruit of culture and art, the source of truth and beauty; faith in the spirituality of pure, unfettered good.

What, then, one wonders, is the mission of the woman in Lebanon?