The Children's Welfare Society's Tea Party

★ At five o'clock on the afternoon of Friday, February 19, the Bristol Hotel witnessed an elegant tea party given by the Children's Welfare Society and attended by the President of the Republic, the two Ministers Rashid Karami and Kazem al-Khalil, a party of the men of the diplomatic corps, the notables of the country, and a select company of gracious ladies and young ladies.

The president of the society, Mrs. Ni'mat Muhyi al-Din Qaranful, and her colleagues received the guests with their native graciousness and warmth, and seated them around small tables arranged with taste in the lounge of the Bristol and laden with sweets and cups of tea.

Mrs. Riyad Sa'id Hajjal delivered a speech in which she saluted President Chamoun and his tender care for the child welfare project, and welcomed those present. She said that the society today supervises seven dispensaries: three of them in Beirut, and three in Hinniyeh, Deir Qoubel, and Qaraoun; the seventh is a mobile dispensary, donated by the emigrant Mr. Ali Muhyi al-Din, set apart for treating the children of the remote villages.

Mrs. Hajjal paid tribute to the white hand which the respected Mrs. Shafiqa al-Azm Diab has extended to the child welfare project: she opened her dispensary at her own expense and equipped it with medicines and medical supplies, and this good deed of hers made the most beautiful impression upon all.

Then the President rose and decorated Mrs. Shafiqa Diab with the Order of the Cedar in the rank of Knight.

The items of the program followed one another — rhythmic dancing, ballet, music, a lottery drawing, and singing by the songstress Zakiyya Hamdan; then the donations poured in for the revival of this humane project, and two thousand five hundred and fifty Lebanese lira were registered within minutes, Mrs. Diab opening the list with a thousand lira.

After the guests had stayed some two hours, they departed, thanking the Children's Welfare Society, its president Mrs. Ni'mat Muhyi al-Din Qaranful, and its members for their activity and their zeal in the cause of suffering childhood.