earned so much in great ways and in small ways, in economies
and in the care of all our resources, too. We women are more careful
in Britain now. We save food, and grow more, and produce more, and
maids and mistresses work together to economize and help. We gather
our waste paper and sell it or give it to the Red Cross for their
funds, give our bottles and our rags, waste no food and save and lend
our money. We could not have been called a thrifty nation before the
war--we are much more thrifty now, in many ways, though there are
still things we could learn.

In the Women's Army and in so much of our work we are learning
discipline and united service--learning what it means to be proud of
your corps and to feel the uniform you wear or the badge is something
you must be worthy of--and it goes back to being worthy of your own
flag and of the ideals for which we all stand in these days.

And the young wives who are married and left behind, who bear their
children with their husbands far away in danger, who have had no real
homes yet, but who wait and hope, they are very wonderful in their
courage and pluck--and, most of all, everywhere, our women, like our
men, wisely refuse to be dreary. There are enough secret dark hours,
but in our work we carry on cheerfully, the women know the soldiers'
slogan, "Cheero," and to Britain and to "somewhere on the fronts," the
same message goes and comes.

Of the great spiritual worths and values, it has brought to women very
much what it has brought to men. All eternal things are more real, all
eternal truths more clearly perceived. When the whole foundations of
life rock under us, in where "there is no change, neither shadow of
turning," the heart rests more surely in these days.

It has brought us agonies and tears, weariness and pain, self-denial
and great sorrows, but it has brought such riches of self-sacrifice,
such service, such love, has shown us such peaks of revelation and
vision to which the soul and the nation can attain, that we count
ourselves rich, though so much has gone.

To think of what we might have been if we had refused to bear our
share--to look back on the evils of luxury and selfishness that were
creeping over us, makes us feel that we may have lost some things,
but "what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose
his own soul." And we have saved our soul. The souls of the nations
travail in a new birth through a night of agony and tears. The