The agricultural engineer and expert to the courts, Mr. Fouad Najjar, sets forth in what follows the actual condition of the Arab woman in rural life, and offers sound practical proposals on the possibility of profiting from woman's activity and talents in the rural field, and

in agriculture in particular.

Woman in the Agricultural Field

I did not wish to broach this important subject until after I had observed in the Lebanese countryside many anomalous mat-ters closely bound up with the life of woman in the countryside, and through it with the life of rural society itself; and after I had become certain that woman cannot enjoy any right, be it political or social, until she plays, in the broad milieu in which she lives — I mean the Lebanese countryside — a great role that will bring her easily to the far-reaching goals toward which her sister in the city is now striv-ing, along a thorny road crowded with problems and difficulties and beset with dangers.

Those who now carry woman's banner are no more than a strong battalion of our educated, aware ladies dwelling in the cities, well versed in many aspects of Lebanese life, yet ignorant of most things about the life of their sister in the countryside. It is only just to acknowledge that, despite the small number of our ladies working in the field of the struggle for their rights, the work they have done from the begin-ning of their struggle until today has been astonishing and great in its results. And I believe that this struggle, which for woman amounts to a holy war, had for its first result a great victory; yet final victory in it may not be writ-ten for woman unless all the great forces latent in every district, every village, and every rural Lebanese family are mobilized for it. The work of an individual, or of a few individuals, however lofty its aim and however great

its importance, cannot be relied upon to bring about a total over-turning of worn-out, deep-rooted conditions unless the majority is

enlisted to take part in it con-sciously and to assure its success.

How precious is woman's pres-ence in the Lebanese countryside! She is the symbol of all its activity; she is the symbol of dili-gence, gentleness, and nobility of character — and, alas, alongside this, a symbol of ignorance, back-wardness, and blind obedience. Is not woman an element of stability in the countryside, checking emigration from it, keeping the landowner on his land and the peasant on his farm? Have not our young men, on many occa-sions, grown eager to emigrate from a Lebanon barren in their eyes and to go to the lands of the Mahjar, where they imagine abundant bounty and plentiful livelihood — and was not woman, in the end, the sole means of their remaining where they are, active

workers begetting their pride of sons, drawing their sustenance in bounties from the earth, enjoying the sight of their kin, and living with them their sweet village life? Is not woman in the countryside a helper to man in his varied, arduous agricultural labors, shar-ing a portion of his toils in a manner deserving admiration and appreciation? Do we not remem-ber the 'late lamented' silk season, whose precious yield was the fruit of woman's efforts almost alone? Have we not seen in the countryside men whose want of manliness and substance reached the point where they squat in their houses sipping coffee and trading talk to kill their time with matters that may concern them or that sound taste would spit out, while their women are in the field performing labors whose harshness makes the assigning of them an unforgivable crime??

It is natural that woman in the countryside, being man's partner, should undertake many labors by which she helps her husband in this life weighed down with hard-ships and cares, joys and sorrows. But the work she does must accord with her natural qualifica-tions and capacities, for we cannot ask of woman exhausting bodily labor: she was not created for work of that kind, and she has qualities of her own — patience, deliberateness, strength of will, adaptability, and a sound mind — that fit her for work nobler and more fruitful than bodily labors of limited results, which lower woman's standing in her society and do not accord with the dignity and respect that we men owe to the partner