The spirit of our women shows, like that of the French women who tend their farms, keep their shops, work ceaselessly everywhere, most clearly and wonderfully in their work.  In our hundreds of hospitals night and day, they care for the wounded and the sick and the dying, bringing consolation, love, skill, heroism, patience and all fine things as their gift.  From myriads of homes they pour forth to their daily toil, carrying on the work of the country, educating the children, taking the place of their men on the railways, the factory, the workshop, the banks and offices.  In the munition works, in the shipyards, in the engineering shops, in the aeroplane sheds, they work in tens of thousands—­risking life and health in some cases, but thinking little of it, compared with what their men are doing, knee-deep in snow and mud and water in the trenches.  “Is the work heavy?” you ask.  “Not so heavy as the soldiers’.”  “Are the hours long?” “Six days and nights in the trenches are longer.”  “We are going to win and you are going to help us”—­and the munition girl and the land girl and the workers answer not only with cheers and words but answer with shells and ships and aeroplanes and submarines and food produced and conserved, and in industrial tasks done by men and women together.

The enemy airships and aeroplanes bomb our cities but our girls “carry on”—­no telephone girl has left her post—­there have been no panics in our workshops.

And the spirit of the Waac—­the khaki girl—­is the spirit of her brother.

On one occasion in France in an air raid, enemy bombs came very near some girl signallers.  They behaved splendidly and someone suggested it should be mentioned in the Orders of the Day.  “No,” said the Commanding Officer, “we don’t mention soldiers in orders for doing their duty,”—­and that tribute to their attitude is deserved and the right one.

And, like our men, we carry on cheerfully, knowing there is only one possible end, victory.  We fight for the sanctity of the given word, for honour, for the rights of individuals and nations, for the ideals that have preserved humanity from barbarism, for the right of service, for the salvation of common humanity.

More, we women work with a feeling in our hearts that we, who bear and cherish life, and to whom its destruction is most terrible, have a great work to do and a great part to play in the settlement of the problem of war in the future.

The transmutation of the struggles of mankind from the physical to the spiritual, the solution of national and international problems, the solution of all the riddles of life that demand an answer or man’s conquest, cannot be done by man alone.  It is our task also and to the great work of building up a new world after we emerge from this crucible of fire in which the souls of the nations are being tested, the spirit of women has much to bring.

ORGANIZATION AND ITS PITFALLS