Women and War Work
W
are lifted u
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burn upward
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e watch o
he boundless
ot comes bli
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BINYON's "Fo
mass feel about the issues of this struggle just as the men do; know, as they do, why we fight, and like them, are going on to the end. The declarations of our Governme
for the sailor and soldier and his dependants, helping the women out of work, but feeling there was so much more to do behind the men-so very much more-for which we had to wait. We did all the other things faithfully and, so far as we could, prepared ourselves and when the tasks came, we volunteered in tens of thousands, every kind of woman, young, old, middle-aged, rich and poor, trained and untrained, and today we have 1,250,000 women in industry directly replacing
difficulties, saving, conserving, working, caring for the children, with so many babies whose fathers have
death of Dr. Elsie Inglis, the initiator of the Scottish Women's Hospitals, who died on November 26th, three days after
that the call had come, with her wonted decision of character, she just readjusted her whole outlook. "For a long time I meant to live," she said, "bu
d happened." Someone said "Our moorings broke." I said, "No, a hand cut them!" Then, after a moment's silence, with an expression in face and voice which it is utterly impossible to convey, she added, "That sa
EDITH
LSIE
ew unity. "You did magnificently," was said to her within an hour of her going. With all
there is no room for sorrow. She le
love and desire to serve-and a great fearlessness. Her message, before she went out alone at dawn to her death, which added another s
he engineer, the business man, the poet, the journalist, the author, the artist, the scientist, the heirs of great names, many of the most brilliant of our young men. We comb out our mines and shipyards, and factories, ceaselessly for more men. Our boys at eighteen go into the army. From eighteen to forty-one every man is liable for service. Our Universities have only a handful of men in them and the
n our many fields of war. We live partly in France and Flanders, in Italy, in the Balkans, in Egypt and Palestine and Mesopotamia, in Africa, with the lonely white crosses in Gallipoli, with our men wh
ery little mourning. We mourn silently, and with a sure faith that our men's supreme sacrifice is not in vain. "Greater love hath no m
e, and many of whom have died, is the message of men who have seen through the veils of time into
f us who take Death into our reckoning all the time.
s thrill; Death
up into imm
c in the mids
hat shines be
ow old, as we that
ary them, nor th
wn of the Sun a
rememb
hat the forces we women fight in the enemy are th
e and its issue, and there is no real place in the world for the true service and genius and work of women, any more than for that of the mass of men, save in democracy. We mean so much in these days by democracy. It seems to be indefinable in its larger meanings. It is not a system of gover
lue to give to their country and to the world. Democracy is the ever changing, ever developing, ever c
rofound and goes so deeply into knowledge and feelings that are too big for words, that the soldier who never tries to express it but goes out and drills and works and disciplines himself
or living faith in deeds and the spirit of the women of all our allied co
n 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.
ut our girls "carry on"-no telephone girl has left
aac-the khaki girl-is t
and someone suggested it should be mentioned in the Orders of the Day. "No," said the Commanding Officer, "we don't
the sanctity of the given word, for honour, for the rights of individuals and nations, for the ideals tha
life, and to whom its destruction is most terrible, have a great work to do a
f 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