way in which our
voluntary workers have gone on faithfully working, conforming to
discipline and hours and steady service as conscientiously as any paid
worker.

The organizing ability displayed by our women in this amounts to
genius. The buying of material, cutting and making up, parcelling,
storing, and packing of gigantic supplies, all the secretarial and
clerical work involved has been the work of women and mostly of women
of the leisured classes, many of them without any previous training.
From the organization of the big schemes of supply down to such work
as the collecting of sphagnum moss, everything that was needed has
been done, and done well.

"BRINGING 'BLIGHTY' TO THE SOLDIER"

"It's a long, long way to Tipperary,
But my heart's right there."

"Cheero."

CHAPTER IV

"BRINGING 'BLIGHTY' TO THE SOLDIER"

"Blighty" is Home, the British soldiers in India's corruption of the
Hindustanee, and Blighty is a word we all know well now.

The full records of this are not easy to give--so much has been done.
Perhaps the simplest way is to begin with the soldier at the training
camp and follow him through his soldier's existence. The first work
lies in giving him comforts, and the women of our country still knit
a good deal and in the early days knitted, as you do now to get your
supplies, in trains and tubes and theatres and concerts, and public
meetings. This was happening while many of our working women were
without work and it was felt that this was likely to compete very
seriously with the work of these women. The Queen realized there was
likely to be hardships through this and also that there would probably
be a great waste of material if voluntary effort was not wisely
guided. So she called at Buckingham Palace a committee of women
to consider the position and Queen Mary's Needlework Guild was the
outcome of it. The following official statement, issued on August 21,
1914, intimated the Queen's wishes and policy.

Queen Mary's Needlework Guild has received representations to
the effect that the provision of garments by voluntary labor
may have the consequence of depriving of their employment
workpeople who would have been engaged for wages in the making
of the same garments for contractors to the Government. A very
large part of the garments collected by the Guild consists,
however, of articles which would not in the ordinary co