The full power of our men must be thrown into military effort. And, then, if as a nation we have brains to pool, we will not stand niggling, but will throw women doctors in to render their service, grant to the nurse corps what it needs to ensure efficiency, throw open the technical schools to girls as well as to boys, modify the college course to meet the facts of life. Each woman unprepared is a national handicap, each prejudice blocking the use of woman-power is treachery to our cause.
As to the final outcome of united thought and group action among women, no one can doubt. Contacts will rub off angles, capable service will break down sex prejudice and overcome government opposition. But there is not time to wait for the slow development of "final outcomes."
Women must pool their brains against their own shortcomings, and in favor of their own ability to back up their country now and here.
[IX
"BUSINESS AS USUAL"]
It is a platitude to say that America is the most extravagant nation on earth. The whole world tells us so, and we do not deny it, being, indeed, a bit proud of the fact. Who is there among us who does not respond with sympathetic understanding to the defense of the bride reprimanded for extravagance by her mother-in-law (women have mothers-in-law), "John and I find we can do without the necessities of life. It's the luxuries we must have." One of the obstacles to complete mobilization of our country is extravagance. And at the center of this national failing sits the American woman enthroned.
Europe found it could not allow old-time luxury trades to go on, if the war was to be won. "Business as usual" is not in harmony with victory.
I remember the first time I heard the slogan, and how it carried me and everyone else away. The Zeppelins had visited London the night before. A house in Red Lion Mews was crushed down into its cellar, a heap of ruins. Every pane of glass was shattered in the hospitals surrounding Queen's Square, and ploughed deep, making a great basin in the center of the grass, lay the remnants of the bomb that had buried itself in the heart of England. The shops along Theobald's Road were wrecked, but in the heaps of broken glass in each show window were improvised signs such as, "Don't sympathize with us, buy something." The sign which was displayed oftenest read, "Business as usual."
The first I noticed was in the window of a print shop, the owner a woman. I talked to her through the frame of the shattered glass. She looked very pale and her face was cut, but she and everyone else was calm. And no one was doing business as usual more composedly than a wee tot trudging along to school with a nasty scratch from a glass splinter on her chubby cheek.
"Business as usual" expressed the fine spirit, the courage, the determination of a people. As the sporting motto of an indomitable race, it was very splendid. But war is not a sport, it is a cold, hard science, demanding every energy of the nation for its successful pursuit. In proportion as our indulgence in luxury has been greater than that of any European nation, our challenge to every business must be the more insistent. There must be a straight answer to two questions: Does this enterprise render direct war service, or, if not, is it essential to the well-being of our citizens?