man is weaving the golden
web of priceless sympathies. Woven of her tenderness, it sparkles with
man's deathless gratitude. The soldier feels her gracious being in every
throb of his true heart. Her love and care are forever around him. In
his lonely night watches, his long marches, his wearisome details of
duty, his absence from home, his countless deprivations, he thinks of
the women of his country, and is proud that he may be their defender.
This thought stimulates him on the field of battle, and nerves his arm
to deeds of glory. And when he falls, he falls into the arms which
spread everywhere around him. The Sanitary Commission is her
representative. She sends it to him to breathe of her in his hour of
pain. Through it she watches o'er him as he lies low and bleeding on the
dreadful field, surrounded by the dead and dying; she sends her
ambulances there to bear him to shelter and comfort; her surgeons stanch
the noble blood, remove the shattered limbs, quench the stifling thirst,
working with a tenderness sucked in with the mother's milk. In the
hospital, in her own gentle person, she soothes his restless hours,
watches o'er his sleepless couch, dresses his mangled limbs, bears him
up with her own faith, giving her strength to aid his weakness, she
leads him back to life, or, if death must come, up to God. American
Women, live up to the holy duties now demanded of you, and your rights
will all be conceded, higher, holier, deeper, broader, more vital than
any for which you have yet asked or hoped. The esteem and veneration of
the very men who have scorned you for your love of luxury, laughed at
you for your ridiculous aping of foreign aristocracy, jeered at you for
your love of glitter, your thirst for wealth, your frivolity and folly,
and despised you for your arrogance and heartlessness--are already
yours. Contempt for you has passed away forever. Let the dead past bury
its dead. American women solve the riddle of woman's destiny. Vast is
her field and heritage: all who suffer belong to her. Her heart is the
strength of love and charity; her mind, justice and the rights of all
who bear the human form; her soul, God's temple among men, in which
dwell the angels of Purity, Sacrifice, and Devotion. Love to God and man
is her creed, self-abnegation her crown, faith her oriflamme, strength
her gift, life her guerdon, and immortality her portion.

American Women, we place a soldier's song before you:

A SOLDIER'S PSA