In my hands now is the book The Birth of Independence — the study prepared by Sheikh Munir Taqi al-Din, Director General of the Ministry of Defense, as a thesis for the master's degree in the sciences from the American University. The book chronicles a period of no more than thirteen days — perhaps the most important period in our contemporary history: the stages of the crisis that preceded the proclamation of independence.
It pleases me to call this study "the anthem of independence," and that takes nothing from its scholarly value; for the author, despite his attempt to make an objective study, as he affirmed in the book's introduction, did not strip himself of his true personality as one of those who threw themselves into that battle, nor did he strip himself of his feeling as a Lebanese citizen for whom independence meant more than a historical event or a subject for scholarly study. And so the book came out a piece of song, representing a period of Lebanese history in which the moral forces — in the fullest sense of the word — were mobilized to seize the first opening that permitted the independence of a people to whom everything in the loftiness of its mountain answers with sovereignty.
What gives the book its scholarly value is the sincerity that fills it, and the writer's care to present his point of view with precision, making of himself a truthful spokesman for the spirit of the Lebanese majority in the battle that led to independence.
And when a historian, fifty or a hundred years hence, undertakes to study this period of our history, he will find in The Birth of Independence one of the finest primary sources for the study of one face of that stage; it will remain for him only to set this splendid scene in its proper place in the history of world diplomacy, in the light of documents that are difficult of access now, and to uncover the true motives of those who tried to put spokes in the wheels — and they were, in that, largely sincere, though it is impossible now to justify the part they played in a battle that proved afterward to have been decisive in our history.
Last month there appeared a book by Mr. Rashad Darghouth, "On the Paths of Life" — a collection of fifteen short tales which the author composed during the last two years, drawing their principal events from his surroundings, his history, and the legends of his country, taking inspiration from them all, and weaving out of his fertile imagination all manner of captivating pictures that carry you, light of heart and contented, into their world — and there you are, borne along with them, glad to follow their happenings and to keep the author company to the very end, without weariness... All this in eloquent phrasing and a delicacy of style in which few of our modern storytellers can keep pace with him.
Through the stories of "On the Paths of Life" you meet the soul of a bold, free-ranging writer who does not scruple to take up our old inherited traditions with criticism and censure, praising what is sound in them and demolishing what is false with his sharp pickaxe — ending, most often, with a
high ideal to which he discreetly hints that we should hold fast.
The author is long practiced in the writing of the short tale, and has three collections of them: "The Sheikh's Sin," "Hajj Mujbih," and "The Dove of the Valley."
And we are pleased that childhood — Arab childhood — should have its share of the new books. There has lately appeared, by Miss A'idah Shakir Sa'b, a book, "Toward an Understanding of Childhood," a booklet in six principal chapters in which the author has treated the most important foundations of modern education, addressed to fathers and mothers, that they may follow its way in their relations with their children.
The author, Miss A'idah Sa'b, is a graduate of Beirut College for Women, a specialist in child education, and readers of "The Woman's Voice" have known her through the "Child's Corner," which she went on nourishing regularly for more than a year; she has since enlarged upon these studies and set them down in a book adorned with pictures suited to the material.
"Toward an Understanding of Childhood" has been issued by the Mash'al Bookshop, and for all its small size it is filled with the new educational topics, treated in a modern style inspired by the need of childhood in our country — and, in consequence, by the Arabic library's want of such materials.
To Miss Sa'b our deepest congratulations, and our encouragement to continue enlisting herself in the cause of childhood...