The first Moroccan woman to speak unveiled before crowds; she wears "blue jeans," drives a car, swims, rides horses, and dances.

Last month Princess Aisha, daughter of the Sultan of Morocco, provoked a crisis between the Arab states and Morocco by accepting the honorary presidency of one of the Jewish societies concerned with giving Jewish youth vocational training in preparation for their transfer to Israel. The Arab League intervened with King Mohammed V, and official circles considered this incident a point of weakness for the Arab front on the international plane. The King expressed his regret that this error had occurred, and said that the princess had not been aware of the committee's aims... But no official reports have arrived confirming that Princess Aisha herself has gone back on her earlier decision.

One recalls the extraordinary warmth of welcome with which the Moroccan princess was received early last September in Damascus and Beirut, on the morrow of the convening of the general congress of the Arab Women's Union in the Syrian capital. In these parts the princess was treated as a great leader and a symbol of the refined Arab woman.

The newspapers scrambled to reach Princess Aisha and set down information about her, but she was reserved and did not open up in her interviews with the journalists, either as they wished or as she wished. It was noticed that the hand of her escorts lay above her hand, and that their word came before hers... The editor-in-chief of this magazine met with her at the time, but obtained not a single answer from her lips... The princess kept murmuring apologies... absent-minded! Yet she insisted on keeping the list of questions, promising to answer them from Rome — the first stop at which her plane would land before reaching Rabat... Despite this, the

answers never arrived either... And doubts circled in the editor's head: what prevented Princess Aisha from keeping her promise? In our questions we had nothing but good intentions; our first and last aim was to introduce the leader of Moroccan womanhood to our readers by way of her upbringing, her culture, her personal inclinations, and the pattern of life she leads...

And behold, the latest issue of the American magazine Ladies' Home Journal brings us the story we sought, in abundance beyond all abundance... We pluck from it this article here, asking ourselves as we do: "Through what breach, one wonders, did the patriotism of Princess Aisha crack, that she should disown the first principle on which the ranks of all the Arabs have agreed — I mean, opposition to Zionism?..."

We still hope and trust that the princess will turn back from her error, to prove that she is fit to lead the Arab women of Morocco and worthy of our love

and our respect... Otherwise we shall declare against her a war without quarter.

XXX

It is a familiar sight in the cities of Morocco today to see hundreds of girls, with their clean faces and their loose-flowing Moroccan garments, setting off happily for school, with the picture of their king's daughter — Aisha! — dangling, as is proper, from their necks.