The "Woman's Voice" Roundtable

In the salon of the president of the League of Women's Organizations in Lebanon, Mrs. Laure Tabet, the "Woman's Voice" roundtable gathered this month to deliberate on the topic of the hour: "the earthquake disaster." And in the dusky Eastern atmosphere, amid the Damascene curtains and the incense of the brazier, the members of the head office of the Lebanese Red Cross fell to telling their stories and their sorrows..

The "Woman's Voice roundtable" took up in its session this time the subject of the Lebanese Red Cross and the noble works it performed in the earthquake calamity that shook the whole of Lebanon.

This circle brought together the head office of the Red Cross, made up of the ladies Sandra Ferdi Khoury, daughter of the Marquise de Freige, president of the Red Cross, and herself president of the publicity and publications committee; Ellen Rihan and Najla Saab, the two secretaries; Miss Renée Arman, director of the mobile dispensaries operation; and the hostess, Mrs. Laure Tabet, treasurer of the Red Cross.

The Lebanese Red Cross took in hand the reins of the relief operation for the earthquake victims. This institution is a branch of a humanitarian, international, worldwide institution with its seat in the city of Geneva, in Switzerland, founded in 1860 when several great powers signed its charter. From that time it began its mighty work.. Before

1945 there was in Lebanon only a subsidiary committee called the Franco-Lebanese Red Cross, but after independence there was founded the Lebanese Red Cross we know today, which is completely independent financially. And only free states have the right to join the International Red Cross.

The first question we put to the members of the Red Cross office was the following:

What is the first thing the Red Cross does when calamities occur — such as the earthquake, for example?

Renée Arman answered, saying: "The first thing it does is medical relief. We send to the stricken villages and towns the mobile dispensaries with doctors, nurses, and scouts, and also milk for the infants and children, and meat and nourishing foods for the sick. In this way we try to secure their medical relief in the region itself; but if the case calls for operations to be performed in hospital, we provide them with transport and all the necessary aid, and sometimes the right of lodging.

And Najla Saab said, continuing: "Everyone knows that in the recent events the Red Cross took over the responsibility of distributing provisions to the inhabitants — food, drink, tents, blankets, and the rest, all from its own fund. The distribution went on without interruption, from the seventeenth of March onward, to all the stricken villages, with complete disinterestedness and fairness, without distinction of