Salma was the mother of her coun-try: "Because I have a soul mighty as life and obedient as death.

I want my country proud and unassailable; I want her steeped in all the civilizations that have crum-bled within her, and scattering to the world the lessons of learning and wisdom. And as wounded motherhood suffered in Rachel's heart, so that she cried out in bitterness to Jacob, 'Give me a child, or I die' — so my hungering soul stood upon the ruins of Baalbek and cried out a cry divine as the gods and deep as the abyss:

'O children of my country, near and far — O children of my coun-try, give me a homeland, or I die.'

Who is the child of Muhammad Mustafa of Basta, and the child of Yusuf Tuma of Chnaneir? They are my two children, by right of the motherhood that transformed the fibers of my heart and made them sensitive, resonant strings. They are my two children, and the children of every woman whom motherhood has ennobled."

And Salma was the mother of independence — her voice, for all its softness and faintness, still rings loud and resounding: "The best school for independence is independence."

And Salma was the mother of woman's rights. But she did not raise her voice demanding in the name of equality alone, but in the name of equality joined to desert; and she made of her life and her struggle a model, an example, and a pattern.

She made her demands holding that every woman is capable of

what she herself was capable, and for that deserves more than many another deserves. She strove, in her frailty and her weakness, and she endured, spurred on by love and by will. And she went out of this world owing no debt to any man.

But how many a debt owed to her remains unpaid! As for the woman of letters, neither pain nor death struck her down.

In the last days before the end she would tell me of tales she was living, complete and half-complete: "I shall dictate to you, if the disease grants me respite, and you shall write." And I expected — had death but turned aside from her — that she would come out to us with works the like of her masterpieces in power of feeling, soundness of

thought, and beauty of expression, and a simplicity beyond even the simplicity of the Acropolis in its grandeur.

Salma said to each one of us what she said to her daughter:

"How much of my soul I have poured into your soul! I gave to you until I kept nothing for myself."

And I fancy her today, as you gather to revive her memory, saying to each one of you — from behind this tomb that holds the body, and from the spaces of this firmament too narrow for her spirit — what she said there to her daughter:

"And I came back to you, and behold, you were a spring that knows no drought, giving to me and giving to me and giving to me without measure." So thank you!

The 1954 Renault

Arriving soon in Beirut

The new 1954 Renault 4 CV

• Roomier

• More comfortable

• More powerful

• Faster, too

• More economical

• A masterpiece of workmanship

• Numerous features

A visit to the agency will repay you

Agents: Bassoul – Heneine & Co.

Tyre Road, opposite the Palm Beach Hotel. Telephone 21-85