“Men wanted under thirty-five years of age, for the United States Army. Special inducements to Pharmacists, Musicians, Bandsmen, Electricians, Clerks, Bakers, Cooks, Barbers, Teamsters, Carpenters, Blacksmiths, Horseshoers, and other Mechanics.” God of our fathers! Not special inducements to Patriots, Men who love their country, Men who believe in liberty, Men who hate cruelty, Men who would avenge Belgium, Free Men, Fighting Men! And, farther down, it is not, “Come and do your bit,” “Your country calls you,” or “Save the Flag.” It offers, forsooth, “a chance to see the world.” Those are the very words! So to-day we are on the edge of war, or at war. And we ask, not for boys of fire and steel, but cooks and teamsters and blacksmiths. But the American boy has imagination, if our War Department has not. And he is coming, in his thousands and tens of thousands. Nothing can hold him back,—not danger, not inadequate preparation, not anything under the blue sky where once he sailed his kites and sent up his Fourth-of-July rockets. Not even the mother he loves. What are we going to do, then, we mothers, when the tumult and the shouting have died, and the long wait comes? We will pray. The churches of France are full of kneeling women. And we will work. There is no spectacular work for mothers in a war. They cannot drive ambulances, or guide aeroplanes, although they are capable of doing both. There will be no need of the wig-wagging that some women are so painfully learning! But they will work for the Red Cross, and they will make up such little packets as only mothers can make,—toothbrushes and chocolates and fresh socks and gingerbread, and a Bible and playing-cards and cigarettes. And in between times, they will wait, in that quiet that is not peace. That is what millions of women are doing just now, while you are reading this. There are two wars being waged to-day. One is the war of hate, and one is the war of love. And this last is the bitter war, because it is being fought in women’s hearts, between their fears and their patriotism. I know. And because fear is evil, it will go down to defeat. Women are brave, and mothers are the bravest of all women, for they have faced the Gethsemane of child-bearing. They will not weaken now. Napoleon said, “Give me the mothers of France, and I will make France.” * * * * * So this is how I see the situation to-day, as it affects me and others like me. If I believe in my country, as God knows I do, if I love it, and that too He knows, I must do my little part, my bit. This the country must know: that women are ready to do their part. Else we are not free women, but slaves. And this the country must know, too: that the women demand that it do its part. The best of preparation, of skill, of guidance, of every sort of provision, is what we require and will have. We will not fail America. Let it not fail us.