Page:This side the trenches, with the American Red cross (IA thissidetrenches00desc).pdf/28

 port the family, the Red Cross is ready to help. The Red Cross believes that, particularly in time of war, it is important that the mother should stay at home so as to have opportunity to devote her full energies to the rearing and education of her children. Some women, however, are happier when they are employed outside of the home. Such women the Home Service worker helps to obtain jobs; she tries to see that they are paid fair wages and that their work is done in healthful surroundings.

Sometimes a woman is not proficient in the very kind of employment in which her skill is usually taken for granted. She may not know how to select and prepare the daily meals. To a Home Service worker the parents and four brothers and sisters of a boy who enlisted seemed to be in poor health. A doctor whose advice she sought said after an examination that the whole family was suffering from lack of nourishment. The real trouble was discovered to be that the mother did not know how to cook or what kind of food to buy. As soon as she was taught these first essentials of housekeeping the health of the family began to improve.

Of all the women, however, who need the Home Service of the Red Cross she who is about to become a mother needs it most of all. Thus a young wife came to the Red Cross office and told the worker there how frightened she was at the thought of what she was about to experience.

"If only Jack were here," she sobbed.

"You must meet Mrs. Smith," suggested the Home Service worker. "Her husband and her only boy are both in France. I'm sure that if you should like her