schools will remain far from the national orientation that is required.
Q — At what age may the rising Arab generation be given the freedom to join political parties and take part in their activity?
A — In my view, the young should not be given the freedom to join political parties before completing the secondary stage of study, because joining a political party means taking a grave decision with regard to the loyalty of the individual human being, and it is not right that such a decision be taken unless the individual has acquired the knowledge and the maturity sufficient for it. Hence I believe that those who work upon boys and girls who have not reached this stage wrong them, wrong the party for which they work, and, in the end, wrong the country. As for the university student, who is presumed to think for himself and take decisions on his own responsibility, there is no objection to his joining parties and taking part in their activity, on condition that this not affect the essential task to which he is called: the task of learning and of preparing himself to do his duty in the service of the homeland.
Q — What is your view of students' resorting, from time to time, to the general strike as a means of gaining their rights?
A — I have said that the first duty of university students is to devote themselves to preparing for the struggle that comes after they finish their studies. If they resort to the strike in such a way that their essential duty is suspended, there is no doubt that the strike harms the higher interest
which they are bound to serve. The young have erred in this matter in the past on two counts: the first is that they used this means to a degree that told badly on their scholastic duties; the second error is that they confined themselves to this one among the means of struggle—and this means is by its nature a negative one, demanding of him who undertakes it little in the way of sacrifice—while there are many positive means which the students have not used in the past to the extent possible or
required: preparing thorough studies on the questions of their countries, or denying themselves some of the comforts they enjoy in order to relieve the stricken among the sons of their homeland, and enlightening public opinion at home and abroad on the aims of the national struggle and its means. In these fields and others there are wide ranges for their activity and their sacrifice, and no doubt there is in them what makes the strike unnecessary, or makes up for what it lacks.
The path knew her—knew her by her light, unhurried walk... and never did the path know, before or since, the like of that rhythmic walk, accompanied by the dance of blond locks on the broad forehead!
Our little one was not alone, that summer; she had a companion a finger's breadth taller. Together the two would go down to the valley, ahead of the dawn—she to line her eyes with its first rays, and he to pluck from its violet threads a ribbon to adorn her lovely head!
And the path would bring her at last to an aged fig tree; the two would plunge in among its interlacing boughs, and nothing could get them out but the shrieking and protest of the sparrows, and the voice of the watchman crashing down on them from on high, from his lookout on the knoll...
And her favorite pastime was to shout their throats hoarse in the heart of that valley, then to listen as the waves of echo followed one another, answering, limpid, until they thinned away... and died.
...How the echo wearied of that monotonous game! But the two little ones never wearied: a shout, then a hush, ....... then laughter—and what laughter!!!!
*
And today the little girl of that far-off yesterday returns, wrapped in a sash of care. The path knows the fall of her unhurried steps, and the grains of dust stir to welcome her.... The valley is on the point of asking her about the companion who stood a finger taller... and the echo holds back, remembering the ring of that double laughter which used to tickle the valley at every dawn...
Is it true that it has gone with the wind?!