Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/773

 Rheims are deeply moved." The full equipment of the smaller hospital groups was given to the French government for its own hospital service. Dr. Caroline Finley returned to the U. S. in August, still a Lieutenant in the French Army. The Prince of Wales, who was in New York, invited her on board H. M. S. Renown, where he conferred on her the Order of the British Empire in recognition of her work at Metz, where British prisoners stricken with influenza were cared for as they arrived from German prison-camps.

This ends the story of the Women's Oversea Hospitals, for which the National Suffrage Association willingly raised nearly $200,000 at the crisis in its own fifty-year movement. Desks for suffrage work were vacant over all the country while their occupants were cheerfully giving their best service to the demands of the war. For the vast majority this took the forms indicated by the above committee reports. In addition there were the activities of money-raising; caring for children and other dependents; safeguarding public health; the usual tasks of nursing and other Red Cross work; the distribution of food administration pledge cards, the organizing of food committees in all townships under the direction of district captains, with "clean-up" days and "elimination of waste days in counties; canning demonstrations throughout communities; alloting and directing garden plots; holding normal training schools to teach gardening; making collections for the Red Cross and other war funds, with countless other activities. Liberty Bonds in the second, third and fourth campaigns to the amount of one-fourth of the total sales were disposed of through the National Suffrage Association, its State branches and women throughout the country.

While the suffragists were devoting themselves to war-service they did not lay down arms for their own cause, which had reached a stage where further delay was impossible. There was a general tacit understanding that, while the war needs of their country were and should be uppermost, their hands must never relinquish the suffrage throttle, and the double tasks of war work and suffrage work were undertaken in a fine spirit of devotion to both. Nevertheless, the anti-suffrage women seized upon the