re lifted up, your hearts
That have foreknown the utter price,
Your hearts burn upward like a flame
Of splendour and of sacrifice.

For you too, to battle go,
Not with the marching drums and cheers,
But in the watch of solitude
And through the boundless night of fears.

And not a shot comes blind with death,
And not a stab of steel is pressed
Home, but invisibly it tore,
And entered first a woman's breast.

From LAWRENCE BINYON's "For the Fallen."

The spirit of women in this greatest of world struggles cannot, in
its essence, be differentiated from the spirit of men. They are one.
The women of our countries in the mass feel about the issues of this
struggle just as the men do; know, as they do, why we fight, and like
them, are going on to the end. The declarations of our Government as
to conditions for peace are ours, too, and when we vote, we shall show
the spirit of women is clearly and definitely on the side of freedom,
justice and democracy.

Our actions speak louder than any words can ever do, and the record
of our women's sacrifices and work stand as great silent witnesses to
our spirit. There is nothing we have been asked to do that we have not
done and we have initiated great pieces of work ourselves. The hardest
time was in the beginning when we waited for our tasks, feeling as
if we beat stone walls, reading our casualty lists, receiving our
wounded, caring for the refugees, doing everything we could for the
sailor and soldier and his dependants, helping the women out of work,
but feeling there was so much more to do behind the men--so very much
more--for which we had to wait. We did all the other things faithfully
and, so far as we could, prepared ourselves and when the tasks came,
we volunteered in tens of thousands, every kind of woman, young, old,
middle-aged, rich and poor, trained and untrained, and today we have
1,250,000 women in industry directly replacing men, 1,000,000 in
munitions, 83,000 additional women in Government Departments, 258,300
whole and part-time women workers on the land. We are recruiting women
for the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps at the rate of 10,000 a month and
we have initiated a Women's Royal Naval Service. We have had the help
of about 60,000 V.A.D.'s (Voluntary Aid Detachment of Red Cross) in
Hospitals in England and France, and on our other fronts, in addition
to our thousands of trained nurses.

The wo