A soldier's mother in France

by Rheta Childe Dorr

I know that many housewives the country over will read this announcement with dismay, and will wonder how much more will be required of them, and how much more they can contrive to give. I want to say to the housekeepers who read this, that they can not possibly know or dream the vast importance of their part in this war. They can not know what their food conservation efforts have meant to the French people, as well as the English, the Italians, and what is left of the stricken Belgians.

Every woman who has conscientiously observed the food regulations, thereby releasing food for our soldiers and the allies, has almost literally fought side by side with the men. She has stood by them and fed them, encouraged them, given them physical and spiritual power to go on, wholeheartedly, in the fight for civilization.

A soldier who goes into battle half nourished, one whose heart is heavy thinking of hungry children at home, is a soldier half beaten. He who goes forward with a well-nourished body and a mind at rest is a soldier three-quarters victorious.

This is how you have helped fight the battle for the peace of the world, women of America. And let me assure you that Europe is fully awake to the fact. Nothing that President Wilson has done, or Congress, or the men at the head of our wonderful army in France, has made a deeper impression on the allies than what the housekeepers of this country have done.

Without any compulsion, without any laws, simply because they were appealed to in the name of humanity, hundreds of thousands of women, rich and poor, in great houses and in farm kitchens, have voluntarily rearranged their whole scale of living, have divided up their food with people they will never know nor see.

It has captured the hearts of the people of Europe. They are lost in admiration. It has taught them what they never believed before—that the United States, far from being the land of the dollar, is a land of idealists.

This was precisely the kind of encouragement our allies in Europe needed. They needed it as much as they needed guns, airplanes, soldiers. It was at a very dark hour in the history of this war that the United States entered the war.

I do not mean that our allies were at the breaking point. But they were near the point of desperation because of the sudden and unexpected defection of Russia. The immediate future was heavy with dread.

Then came the news, “the Yanks are coming.” The black cloud was lifted. The world was saved. Everybody knows the difficulties that had to be overcome before an American army was landed in France. Germany did not believe that we could land an army there, but we did.

And long before that we landed enough food in France, and in other hungry lands overseas, to enable the allies to carry on until our men came. That was one of the big feats of the war, and in it the women played their part, and more than their part.