Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/570

 ful success in raising millions of dollars. Mrs. Bass, the only woman member of the War Savings Committee, added an earnest appeal to women to help finance the war, and the other speakers on their several topics raised the meeting to a high level of patriotic enthusiasm. In a stirring address Dr. Shaw showed what the country expected of women at this critical time, saying:

We talk of the army in the field as one and the army at home as another. We are not two armies; we are one—absolutely one army—and we must work together. Unless the army at home does its duty faithfully, the army in the field will be unable to carry to a victorious end this war which you and I believe is the great war that shall bring to the world the thing that is nearest our hearts— democracy, that "those who submit to authority shall have a voice in the government" and that when they have that voice peace shall reign among the nations of men.

The United States Government, learning from the weaknesses and the mistakes of the governments across the sea, immediately after declaring war on Germany knew that it was wise to mobilize not only the man power of the nation but the woman power. It took Great Britain a long time to learn that—more than a year—and it was not until 50,000 women paraded the streets of London with banners saying, "Put us to work," that it dawned upon the British government that women could be mobilized and made serviceable in the war. And what is the result? It has been discovered that men and women alike have within them great reserve power, great forces which are called out by emergencies and the demands of a time like this.

Dr. Shaw described the forming of the Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense by the Government and her selection as its chairman. She said she had no idea what the committee was expected to do, so she went to the Secretary of the Navy to find out, and continued: "I learned that the Woman's Committee was to be the channel through which the orders of the various departments of the Government concerning women's war work were to reach the womanhood of the country; that it was to conserve and coordinate all the women's societies in the United States which were doing war work in order to prevent duplication and useless effort. This was very necessary, not because our women are not patriotic but because they are so patriotic that every blessed woman in the country was writing Washington, or her organization was writing for her, asking the Government what she could do for the war and of course the Government