Everywhere the girl in America strove with helpful earnestness to do "her bit." Every strata of society called out its members in a wonderful plan of feminine preparedness. Besides the thousands of women members of the Red Cross some of the most prominent organizations officered and planned by women include The National League for Women's Service, which has branches in every large city in the United States. They enrolled women as motor car drivers, telegraphers, wireless operators, agriculturists and skilled mechanics.
Miss Anne Morgan, as head of this organization, devoted an enormous amount of energy to the success of the work.
OTHER SOCIETIES ORGANIZED.
Other societies organized were the National Special Aid Society, Service of Any Kind, Militia of Mercy, which sends and provides bandages and other necessities and comforts for the soldiers; Girl Scouts of America, first aid, signalling and drills; Daughters of the American Revolution; the Suffrage Party and the Anti-Suffrage Society; the International Child Welfare League and the Girls' National Honor Guard. The Federation of Women's Clubs all over the United States also organized for any patriotic service that women could perform.
A practical way of doing something to help France and Servia was offered early in the war by the splendid initiative of Dr. Elsie Inglis and the Scottish Federation of Women's Suffrage Societies, who organized hospitals for the wounded, the staffs of which were all women, and called on other societies for their support.
The London society responded first by subscriptions from individual members, then by giving beds, then (in February, 1915) by offering itself as London agent for the hospitals and undertaking all the practical work, in the sending out of personnel and equipment, which had to be transacted in London.
It is only by carefully systematized organization that great work of this kind can be carried on. The slapdash, haphazard of hysterical excitement can have no legitimate place in a movement that provides stepping stones toward the salvation of the civilized world.
One of the things which will live long in the history of womankind was the wonderful work done by the magnificently courageous units of Lady Paget's nursing force, which went out to Servia, when that country was laid waste not only by the German beasts, but also by disease.
It was not the fault of those brave women and men that things happened at Uskub and in other Servian towns that do not bear repeating.
It was just the lack of thorough preparedness for a war which was much worse than humanity had thought possible that deepened the tragedy of their situation. In Servia, in fact, the career of the hospitals was quite checkered and the service rendered proportionately more vital.