Work

Thank you — government, orga-nizations, associations, and all here present.

Thank you, because you have gathered to honor the memory of our mother.

Thank you, because you have gathered to honor the memory of the Mother:

our mother and yours.

Salma lived and died a mother.

In every letter her pen traced, in every phrase her lips uttered, in every gesture that came from her, there is a boundless overflow of the feeling of motherhood.

And how many an orphan is there, now that Salma is gone, besides the daughter who is of her flesh and blood!

Salma was the mother of har-mony, of balance, of proportion — the mother of storms and of shades crowding into a single line to create a beautiful form.

She was the soldier's mother, and his tongue: "Send me back to my country, to my village, to my mother's breast and her pure breath."

She was the emigrant's mother: "Send me back to Lebanon, to its soil and its sky, to its snows and its waters... send me back to Lebanon."

She was the mother of the wretched — mother of the young girl they sell into marriage, she who never "smiled upon love, nor upon manly vigor, nor upon youth"; and mother of that husband who is a stranger in

his own house. She consoled and comforted, and stormed in the face of all that had hardened into stone among society's traditions.

She was the mother of the deceived and the forsaken, mother of the exiled and the hungry and the persecuted, and the crucified,

mother of the sick and the imprisoned,

mother of the deprived, men and women alike.

She was the mother of the call to human brotherhood:

"Let us be what we will, O people; let us trace our descent to Hammurabi, or to Pharaoh, or to the Tatars — but let us be human beings.

And O you good, tender mothers of this homeland: there are many children sleeping this winter

under tents. These little ones accept with gratitude the least, least bit of love and tenderness."

And Salma was the mother of the true nationalism — active, responsible, self-sacrificing.

Then let us sacrifice.

Let the official sacrifice, and the young men, and the girl, and the woman.

Let the mother sacrifice an hour: "and teach her child the language of his forefathers herself; for it is a disgrace that we should cast these stones at the foreign institutes every time we look upon our own abasement."

Let the whole nation sacrifice a passion that is the root of the affliction; let it sacrifice the sectarian passion that brands our several patriotisms.

Then let us sacrifice.

Let the official sacrifice, by lifting up his brow before his foreign chief — for when the brow of the individual is lifted, the brow of the nation is lifted.

Let the young men sacrifice their daily ease and their silk-lined living, and let them demand military service with one voice; for the homeland whose foundations are kneaded with French or English blood ceases to be a homeland the day the mothers of France and England begrudge us the darlings of their hearts.

Let the girl who has time to spare sacrifice, and help her father to earn money — for money alone is the pillar of independence.

Let the woman of wealth sacrifice for the nation's sake: let her give of her money to the national schools and the national associations, and give of her long day a few short hours to spend in the nation's hospitals and its orphanages, and for the children whose mothers are forced to sweat blood for the loaf.

Let all the women of the nation sacrifice their worship of Western novelties; for the moneys they send to Europe as the price of stockings and buttons and gewgaws are the nation's blood and the sweat of its brow — nay, the water of its face — nay, they are the outright price of the chains whose links grow more numerous every day.