I do not know how often I heard those words in the days that followed. When the President said of America in closing his address to Congress on April 2, 1917, “God helping her she can do no other,” he was only expressing that to which the majority of the people of the West, as I heard them, had made up their minds. Closely watching, I personally felt utterly remote. There was nothing for me to do. In the pandemonium of opinion nothing I could say or do would hinder or help, and so I went on with my daily rounds. I was speaking at a big dinner in Cleveland early in April when a telegram was handed to me, signed by the President. It appointed me a member of what he called the Woman’s Committee of the Council of National Defense. I did not know what the appointment meant, but when your Government is trying to put through a war, whether you approve or not, I had long ago concluded that as for me I would do whatever I was asked to do. And so I sent at once an acceptance of what I took as an order. Two weeks later I received my first instructions. They came from the head of the committee, Dr. Anna H. Shaw. 16 WOMEN AND WAR What is it all about? That is what we asked ourselves when on May 2nd, answering the call of our chairman Dr. Anna Shaw, we met in Washington. And where were we to sit? We were but one of many anxious, confused, scrambling committees for which a place must be found. Our predicament was settled by finding a room somewhere on Pennsylvania Avenue—a dreary room with a rough table and not enough chairs to go around. My first contribution to winning the War was looting chairs from adjacent offices. My success gave me hope that after all I might be at least an errand boy in the war machine. It was not long, however, before the Woman’s Committee was a beneficiary of the civilian outbreak of patriotic generosity which had swept Washington. “You may have our house, our apartment,” people cried. A fine and spacious old house close to Connecticut Avenue facing the British Embassy was offered us, a much more comfortable and dignified headquarters than I think we expected under the conditions. We remained there throughout the War.