We, the hundreds of thousands of overweight citizens, combined with the hundreds of thousands of the normal who are overeating to their ill, can save all the food that is necessary.  We are anxious, willing, eager to do this.  Now we know how, and we will.

Food Will Win the War

WATCH OUR WEIGHT!

13

Three Years Later

February, 1, 1921

An Added Chapter in Which Are Offered Twenty-one Suggestive Menus

After nearly two years with the American Red Cross in the Balkans I return to find the little book has been carrying on in my absence—­I write this for the fifth edition—­and my publishers insisting that I must furnish some more menus.  They affirm that there are many who do not care to or cannot figure out their own.

After being so long under military discipline I obey now instinctively, although I do not want to do this.  But you know publishers.  They say that if there are menus for those who do not have the desire to compute them, the usefulness of the book will be increased.  Publishers are so altruistic.

Now far be it from me to scorn the possibility of increased sales myself.  So I comply, and after you are reduced you will have the energy and the increased keenness to scout around in the calories and make out your own.

* * * * *

A little of my Balkan experience in the reducing line may not be amiss.  In Albania, where I was stationed most of the time, life is very strenuous.  We all had to work hard and expend a great deal of nervous energy.  Medical calls on foot in the scorching sun over unkind cobblestones, long distance calls on unkinder mules, long hours in nerve-racking clinics, ferocious man-eating mosquitos, scorpions, centipedes, sandflies, and fleas, and other unspeakable animals kept us hopping and slapping and scratching.

But there was one consolation to me.  With this work, more intensive and more strenuous than I had ever done before, I would not have to diet—­I would not have to watch my weight—­I would not have to count my calories!  Oh, joy!

We lived a community life, we Red Crossers.  We had plain blunt food, American canned mostly, supplemented with the fare that could be eked out of Albania, and cooked by an Albanese who could not be taught that we Americans were not Esquimos and did not like food swimming in fat.  However, it tasted good to famished Red Crossers, and I ate three meals a day, confident that I would retain my girlish middle-aged slenderness and not have to diet.  We had no scales and no mirrors larger than our hand mirrors.  Our uniforms were big and comfortable.

* * * * *

The French who are in charge of Scutari depart, the officers leaving to us some of their furniture, including a full length French plate mirror.  Ordinarily when I look in a full-length mirror I don’t hate myself so much—­so it is with some degree of anticipated pleasure that I complacently approach, to get a life-size reflection of myself after many months of deprivation of that pleasure.