Mrs. Laure Tabet, president of the League of Women's Organizations, wrote:

Firmness in gentleness, a strong personality in womanliness, learning in modesty. Such was Salwa Mahmasani Moumina, the friend we have lost. As I write these words I feel a deep sorrow for one whom I respected and who returned my respect, whom I trusted and who returned my trust, whose friendship I gave and who proved the true friend.

She gave proof of her devotion the day she was asked to deliver an address at the oratorical festival held in May 1957, when I stood as a candidate for the Chamber of Deputies. She agreed, and came to the gathering with a smile lighting her face, and stood to deliver a splendid speech describing woman's role in life and its importance, in sound style, in expressive, measured phrases,

and with eloquent delivery. All Salwa's speeches were of this high level, and all her articles. Yet that speech I prize in a special way, and I shall never forget her devotion as long as I live, for she wrote it despite her illness — whose secret she kept as it tore at her inward parts, and which she knew would snap the bough of her life. She did not let it weaken her friendship, but met it with the resignation of a believer, the courage of an intelligent woman, and a sweet smile that never left her lips. She tried every means of science to find a cure; yet with her learning and intelligence she understood that none of these means would succeed. She did not despair, and she did not complain; she

Ustad Wasif Baroudi says:

armed herself with strength and patience, and in this — as in all her life — she was a model of all that is good and noble.

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Ustad Wasif Baroudi says:

Salwa Mahmasani Moumina, God rest her, was a woman with a feeling for woman's mission in life!..

I still remember a conversation with her — the loss makes it the more wonderful, and makes us the more grieved and sorrowful:

I happened upon her one day when the movement of candidacies for the elections was at its height, and there was talk of woman's duty amid that surging flood. I said to her in all sincerity: Why does Mrs. Salwa not stand as a candidate herself? She smiled, and answered me with her well-known composure: What matters is not that woman stand for election while she is still at the beginning of the age of emancipation and awareness... What matters more is that she work, with whatever sway she holds over feeling and thought, to plant firmly the principles of election, and to repair what the past has spoiled; thus we prove the soundness of our renaissance, we women, and perform, in practice, the duty of educating man, for the progress of society!.. That is our task before any other attempt!..

She was tactful, God rest her: she said "what the past has spoiled," and did not say "what man has spoiled"!.. though that was indeed what she meant!.. And I said to myself: she is truly a "woman," and we need her like among women... It is not enough to search for the man among men; we must also take care to search for the woman among women!.. For womanliness is the twin of manliness... Happy the nation that finds the man in its men, and the woman in its women!.. And Mrs. Salwa Mahmasani Moumina was, in our Lebanese Arab society, a woman worthy of trust; and that is why her loss is a loss that stirs pain in every soul!..