With Dorothy Thompson, Friend of the Arabs

The well-known American journalist Dorothy Thompson is now making, with her husband, a tour of the countries of the East. During her stay in Dhahran last month, our friend Mrs. Intisar Tabash Abu Khadra was able to meet her and to record some of what she said to her, especially for "The Woman's Voice."

Dorothy Thompson is now on her way to Lebanon, after visiting Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Iraq, Syria, and Jordan.

We thank Intisar for this delightful interview... and bid our gracious guest, in advance, a hearty welcome...

She is a bundle of activity and vitality. I had heard of her before ever I saw her or met her. I knew her through her writings and her pictures in the Arab and Western newspapers and magazines. She is an intimate friend of the Arabs, carrying the banner of the defense of their rights in the newspapers and gatherings of America, and for this she heads the American society of the Friends of the Middle East. For four months she has been touring the world, having set before her eyes a visit to the whole of the East and a study of its problems at close range. She reached Egypt, then the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where she spent several days in Jidda as the guest of the Saudi government, and several receptions were held in her honor. After Jidda she went to Dhahran, the oil region and headquarters of the Arabian American Oil Company, where she stayed about ten days, during which she delivered three lectures and was honored at several receptions, among them one given by the Arab employees of the company.

In reply to a word of welcome delivered by a representative of the Arab employees, Mrs. Thompson gave a speech in which she thanked those who had arranged the reception, and praised the Arab hospitality she had met with during her travels. She said she was taking this opportunity to affirm her support of the Arab cause, in whose justice she believes. And she promised to explain this cause in the greatest possible number of American gatherings and newspapers, and elsewhere.

In her principal lecture Miss Thompson spoke of President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Dorothy Thompson declares:
• I liked President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who has restored the glory of the Arabs.
• Woman can surpass man in journalism, if she is given the same conditions as he.
• Journalism under a "censor" has no value whatever!

She said she had met him at a place outside Cairo where he was spending a period of rest. She had been told before the interview that the President was resting from continuous work, but when she looked at his face it became clear to her that no signs of fatigue whatever appeared on it. She added: I can say that he had no need at all to go to Jamaica!! — and the audience interrupted her with cheers and laughter. She spoke of what she had heard about the dictatorship of the Egyptian President, and said she had not found him so; in her journalistic life she had met many dictators, such as Hitler and Mussolini, but this man is not of that stamp. She admired his simplicity, his frankness, and his calm in speech and movement; he differs, too, from other dictators in that he does not dodge questions and does not avoid looking into the speaker's eyes — on the contrary, his eyes are always trying to draw the eyes of the person sitting with him.

Miss Thompson spoke for an hour and a half, summing up all that had passed in her meeting with Abdel Nasser, which lasted three hours; the core of the talk, naturally, was the political events through which Egypt has passed, and the deeds of Abdel Nasser, which have restored to the Arabs their pride and their glory. When she finished she said: Abdel Nasser attracted me by his dignity and the perfection of his presence — but do not think I praise him because I have fallen in love with him. No! Abdel Nasser is the age of my son!!

While Mrs. Dorothy Thompson was in Dhahran I had occasion to meet her, and a short conversation passed between us, in which there was both inquiry and profit. I said to her: It has struck me that you are called Miss Thompson although you are married — does that not annoy your husband? She laughed and said: I was known by my name before I married, and when I married, my husband accepted me as I am. And she added, laughing: It once occurred to him to change his own name and become Mr. Thompson... that is my husband's favorite joke on the subject! Among my friends I am known as Mrs. Kopf, but outside America I am known only as Miss Thompson.

Then Miss Thompson said that her writings on the Middle East had caused her many difficulties, the chief — indeed the latest — of which was that three of the newspapers she writes for dispensed with her articles during this very journey.

She said: A day will come when I lose my work, and that does not trouble me in the least; I do what satisfies my conscience and the conscience of the world. As for journalism for women, and their work as compared with men's, she said that woman can succeed in it and surpass man if she is given the same conditions as he, and that nothing in the world can set bounds to woman's genius and activity; a just society judges a woman by her work, not by her sex. During the Second World War, for example, she was a press correspondent and representative of world news agencies in the middle of Germany, the field of battle. She shook her head and asked me: Do you think they chose me for that for nothing... or that, merely by being a woman, I had won their sympathy and admiration? No! I filled that post because of my journalistic ability — nothing else.

She was silent a little, then said: But society itself is hard on us women, and before everything comes the man. A husband, for example, will not accept his wife's being away from home at night or on his days of leave, even if she is doing a bold piece of journalistic work, the first of its kind. A woman can forgive her husband his absence from home most of the time, and sometimes for long days, if his work requires it of him; but a man will not accept his wife's working away from the house all the time — and this alone is the fundamental problem that besets the lives of married women journalists such as... and she mentioned to me the names of certain Western women journalists who separated from their husbands for nothing but the husband's opposition to his wife's work. Miss Thompson says she was twenty-five years old when she began her journalistic work, and that she is ready to give up her profession entirely if there is anything in it that vexes her husband or conflicts with her married happiness. But she thanks God that he understands her work, values her efforts, and always helps her in every side of her activity; for he is an artist who spends his time carving statues and painting pictures, and so he values human endeavor and works to foster it.

Miss Thompson has an only son, and one grandchild as well; and when she began to speak of her grandchild she forgot herself entirely — then recollected herself to say that her daughter-in-law is expecting another child, and that she will strive to finish her journey before the month of March, so that the birth may take place in her presence.

Miss Thompson told me that as a journalist she hates nothing more than censorship, and that the publication of one irregular piece of news without censorship is in her eyes far more important than everything written after the censor's review; for journalism under the censor has no value whatever. Newspapers exist to express frank opinions, to build up what is fit for building, and to tear down what deserves tearing down.