Our distilleries are taken over by the Government for spirits for munitions and our beer is cut down very greatly. Travelling kitchens go out from the Ministry of Food also and do demonstrations in villages and country districts on cooking and conservation. The Ministry issues leaflets of recipes and instructions in cooking and has a special Win the War Cookery Book. Articles are also published on food values and quite a number of people begin to understand something about calories, even though they are rather vague about what it all means. Naturally most of the Food speaking and work is done by women though food control and saving is men's and women's work. This year we saved grain by collecting the horse chestnuts, a work that was done by the school children. These are crushed and the oil used for munitions and it was reckoned we could save tens of thousands of tons of grain by doing this. A wonderful work in the use of waste materials has been the work of the Glove Waistcoat Society, to which American women have kindly sent old gloves. Old gloves are cleaned, the fingers are cut off, the other big pieces stitched together and cut into waistcoats and backed by linenette. These are sold to the soldiers and sailors for wear under their tunics and are most beautifully light and windproof. The fingers of kid gloves are made into glue, of wash leather gloves into rubbers for household use. The big pieces of linenette over are made into dust sheets and the small scraps go to stuff mattresses for a Babies' Home. The buttons are carded and sold and the making up provides work for distressed elderly women. It needs no funds--it is self-supporting--it only needs old gloves. In preventing waste and in food production and conservation, our people have learned much, and a very great deal of admirable work is being done. THE WOMEN'S ARMY AUXILIARY CORPS "Now every signaller was a fine Waac, And a very fine Waac was she--e." "Soldier and Sailor, too." CHAPTER XI THE WOMEN'S ARMY AUXILIARY CORPS The Waacs is the name we all know them by and shall, it seems, continue to. It will have to go into future dictionaries beside Anzac. The deeds of the Anzacs in Gallipoli and France are immortalised in many records--magnificently in John Masefield's "Gallipoli"--an epic in its simplicity. The work of the Waacs is the work of support and substitution and its records only begin to be made. The Women's Army Auxiliary Corps is an official creation of this year. At the Women's Service Demonstration in the Albert Hall in January, 1917, Lord Derby asked for Women for clerical service in the army and official appeals were issued in February and repeatedly since that time, and now all over the country we have Recruiting Committees organizing meetings and securing recruits. They are recruiting at the rate of 10,000 a month.