approaches the home in its
opportunity, nor equals it in its successes.

The woman's position at its head is hard. The result of her pains and
struggles are rarely what she hopes, either for herself or for any one
connected with her, but this is true of all human achievement. There
is nothing done that does not mean self-denial, routine,
disillusionment, and half realization. Even the superman goes the same
road, coming out at the same halfway-up house! It is the meaning of
the effort, not the half result, that counts.

The pain and struggle of an enterprise are not what takes the heart
out of a soldier; it is telling him his cause is mean, his fight in
vain. Show him a reason, and he dies exultant. The woman is the
world's one permanent soldier. After all war ceases she must go daily
to her fight with death. To tell her this giving of her life for life
is merely a "female function," not a human part, is to talk nonsense
and sacrilege. It is the clear conviction of even the most thoughtless
girl that this way lies meaning and fulfillment of life, that gives
her courage to go to her battle as a man-in-line to his, and like him
she comes out with a new understanding. The endless details of her
life, its routine and its restraints, have a reason now, as routine
and discipline have for a soldier. She sees as he does that they are
the only means of securing the victory bought so dearly--of winning
others.

From this high conviction the great mass of women never have and never
can be turned. What does happen constantly, however, is loss of joy
and courage in their undertaking. When these go, the vision goes. The
woman feels only her burdens, not the big meaning in them. She
remembers her daily grind, not the possibilities of her position. She
falls an easy victim now to that underestimation of her business which
is so popular. If she is of gentle nature, she becomes apologetic, she
has "never done anything." If she is aggressive, she becomes a
militant. In either case, she charges her dissatisfaction to the
nature of her business. What has come to her is a common human
experience, the discovery that nothing is quite what you expected it
to be, that if hope is to be even halfway realized, it will be by
courage and persistency. It is not the woman's business that is at
fault; it is the faulty handling of it and the human difficulty in
keeping heart when things grow hard. What she needs is a strengthening
of her wavering fai