I would not like to be interpreted as being against all small organizations for war work. Many of the existing ones are doing good work. I know that all women can not leave their homes for regular work in any organization. But unless some miracle ends this war within a year, I hope to see a great army of American women enlisted like soldiers, for the duration of hostilities uniformed and paid workers behind the battle line here and in France, Italy, and wherever else the war calls for workers. CHAPTER XXVIII THE DARK OCEAN LANES In the quiet little hotel which is my home when I am on this side of the Atlantic, there have been staying until recently a group of army nurses. There were about one hundred and thirty of these nurses, fine, strong, skilled women, and they were in New York on their way to France. They didn’t know where they were to be stationed. They were a California nursing unit and their goal was a base hospital--but in what part of France the base hospital was to be located, they knew no more than I did. All they knew was that they were anxious to be off. They were as eager to get to work in that hospital as our soldiers are to get to the front. They fretted at the delay, and they asked me a thousand questions about France, about the medical service corps, about the hospitals. Soon after their arrival at the Atlantic coast the German submarines made their sudden, savage attacks on American shipping. American waters were reported full of these vipers of the sea. They were said by some to be accompanied by a “mother ship” which would keep them supplied for an indefinite stay. There was talk of a possible base in Mexico from which whole fleets of U-boats would come and go. Did all this have the slightest effect on those nurses or on their eagerness to sail? Not a bit of it. They simply said, wouldn’t it be the limit if Secretary Daniels stopped all sailings? But of course he wouldn’t. One morning I opened my door and saw a group of these California nurses standing guard over an enormous pile of hand luggage, suit-cases, satchels and hold-alls. The women greeted me with broad smiles. “Well,” I said, “you look as if you had packed all your troubles in your old kit bags.” “We have,” they chorused. “Nobody’s got a trouble in the world. We sail ‘from an Atlantic port’ this afternoon!” Right out into the submarines. Across three thousand miles of peril. Into the unknown. Without a fear. This is not exactly what the war lords planned when they sent their biggest submarines to blockade the American coast. They did not hope, of course, to stop all shipping from this side. But they undoubtedly counted on terrorizing the American people, especially the women.