15 Ladies from the Middle East Discuss Their Basic Problems

Salwa Dimashqiyah al-Said talks about the third conference of the "Committee of Correspondence" in Washington

The Committee of Correspondence — Talk with our friend Salwa al-Said is always delightful and rich in feeling; is she not the daughter of the most polished woman talker Lebanon ever reared — I mean Julia Tu'mah Dimashqiyah, God rest her soul.

We had had it in mind to talk with Salwa about the Baalbek festivals, the new decisions, and the surprises awaited this summer, since she is an active member of the responsible committee; but the bloody events that have swept Lebanon these past two months strangled the plans in their cradle and bolted the door against anyone who had promised himself a rich feast, tourist and Lebanese alike.

But there was another matter to talk over with Salwa, just back from New York, where she was invited to represent Lebanon at the third international conference of the Committee of Correspondence.

For acquaintance and the exchange of views

The "Committee of Correspondence" was founded in New York five years ago by fifteen ladies who belong to international women's institutions and preside over the finest public and private societies in New York. The striking trait they all share is energy, and a sincere love of knowledge — and hence of growth.

The aim of the "Committee of Correspondence" is the exchange of information and views on the basic problems that concern woman in every part of the world. Long experience has proved to them that nothing serves their aim and leads them to this goal like personal contact, through inviting delegates from all over the world to widen the circles of acquaintance and to draw information and news from its very sources, undistorted by crooked propaganda.

America knows nothing of the outside world

The American woman admits, frankly and good-naturedly, that she knows little of the events taking place in the world that concern her and affect her society; but she does not conceal her pressing eagerness to know the bare facts and to look upon the plain truth — as though she had grown suspicious of the Zionist propaganda which has spread and struck deep, and whose influence has overrun the American press.

The problems of woman in the Middle East

Hence the meeting of the "Committee of Correspondence" this year was devoted to the problems of woman in the Middle East. It was held between April 25 and May 19 last, and was attended by fifteen ladies representing eleven countries: Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Morocco, the Sudan, Turkey, and Iran.

Fifteen ladies of heavy caliber, in culture and in social standing, joined together by "Arabic" — all but two, and no more: the delegates of Turkey and Iran. So it was no wonder that they agreed from the outset on the various problems woman suffers in the Arab countries — social, cultural, and political — and then tried to find practical solutions for spreading peace and security, with all a woman's ardor and sincerity.

The Arab delegates: Among the delegates appeared Arab faces that have shone in their societies and whose voices have risen in the fields of social service and the liberal professions. Besides Mrs. Salwa al-Said and Mrs. Najla Estephan (Lebanon), there were Dr. Lam'an Zaki al-Damluji and Ghuzin Rashid (Iraq), Zahia Marzouk and Lily

Doss (Egypt), Atifa al-Jabiri (Syria), Madiha Nusseibeh (Jordan), Naila Ben Ammar (Tunisia), Leila Ben Allal (Morocco), Umm Salma (the Sudan), and Mrs. Imam (Saudi Arabia).

The program of the session: The meetings of the "Committee of Correspondence" followed one upon another according to the agenda: in the morning the discussion circles and lectures were held, each delegate speaking at length about her country and answering the questions put to her; in the afternoon public and private visits were arranged, and receptions large and small in the clubs and in the homes — a perpetual motion which the delegates kept up throughout the twenty-five days. Whenever one of them felt exhausted, and was tempted to fall behind the caravan, she was turned back from her intent by the high mettle of the American members; for despite the advanced age of most of them, and despite their carrying weighty responsibilities in their homes and in their work, they showed an astonishing energy which their Eastern companions envied them. The Eastern ladies marveled especially at the American woman's ability to divide her activity between her work and her home — and not at the expense of running the house and raising the children, as most often happens — and in this the Arab woman bowed her head to the American and conceded her precedence.

Salwa lectures on Lebanon and the Arab countries

The women's clubs of America — and how many they are! — bestirred themselves to get in touch

with the guests of the "Committee of Correspondence" and invite them to give lectures about their countries. These were golden opportunities, allowing the Arab delegates to bring obliterated truths into the light and to remove the distorted pictures of our Arab East, even from the minds of ladies known for their Zionist sympathies.

Salwa lectured at the Congressional Club in Washington, before a gathering of no fewer than two hundred ladies — wives and relatives of members of Congress — tracing in her engaging style the evolution of the Arab woman in general, and the Lebanese woman in particular, down through history to our own day, and citing living examples from her own life that lent her talk a touch of charm.

In Washington, too, the friend of the Arabs, Mrs. Alma Kerr, invited her to meet the "Women Journalists' Association," where she showed a skill in speech that drew all eyes, particularly when she spoke of the "Baalbek Festivals" — that national artistic project she has taken under her wing from its birth until today.

Her impressions of the conference: With the end of the conference the delegates returned to their countries, laden with the fruits of beneficent knowledge, having built firm friendships with the women of the world, founded on close understanding and mutual sympathy.

The peak of her impressions was her meeting with General Gruenther, president of the American Red Cross, and the visit that followed it to the "blood bank," which receives every day a hundred volunteers from Washington and about 750 from its suburbs. Would that her own countrymen had such open-handed public spirit!

Salwa today believes more strongly than ever in the sincerity of women's intentions the world over to champion their sister woman, to strengthen her arm, and to defend her causes for the consolidation of peace. She is deeply optimistic about the bond that now unites her with the members of the "Committee of Correspondence," and she feels that she is now able, through them, to refute every article that appears in the American press spreading falsified facts about her country...