Lebanon celebrated, on the twenty-second of last November, the anniversary of its glorious independence with a splendid military parade in which the capabilities of our valiant army, both material and spiritual, were displayed.

The anniversary of independence is indeed a festival of thought on the lofty national plane. In it the Lebanese concentrate their thinking on the aspects of their cause and on the eras that succeeded one another over their country, ending, fourteen years ago, in that tremendous historic uprising which destroyed colonialism once and for all, opened wide the door of freedom to the people, and gave them the opportunity to exercise their rights in full, like the advanced democratic peoples.

With the return of this anniversary there is renewed in our souls confidence in the immense national energy with which our breasts abound, as soldiers faithful to their mission, conscious of their responsibilities toward their homeland, and of what they hope for it and for the sister Arab countries: a future rich in stability, dignity, and glory.

There is no occasion like this holiday for woman to remind herself that the homeland has claims upon her, as it has upon man—rights and duties; that the shining page she recorded on the morrow of the battle of independence is an incentive for her to carry the struggle to completion; and that the rewards she hopes to receive, one after another, depend on how well she fulfills her mission as a conscious citizen who holds sacred, before all else, her role as wife and as mother, and who does not take lightly anything that touches her dignity or harms her reputation as an honorable lady who yearns for full equality of rights between herself and her brother, man.

Let us then draw from the anniversary of independence lessons worth heeding, and a point of departure toward a better future in which woman realizes herself, on the broad human plane.