nds of young
school-teachers have left the schoolroom behind, closed the book and
desk and gone to the factory. Tens of thousands of young wives and
mothers have left their little children with the grandmother. Many
rectors and clergymen and priests, unfit for service at the front by
reason of age, work all day long in the munition factory. Many a
professional man crowds his work in the office that he may reach the
factory for at least a few hours' work upon shot and shell.

One day in France, as I was entering the factory, I saw perhaps twenty
young women come out, hurry across the street to a building where two
old crippled soldiers were taking care of the little children. These
young mothers nursed their babes, looked after the other children and
then hurried back to the factory. Every minute was precious; every day
was big with destiny. Their young husbands and brothers and lovers, when
the German push came, must have their cartridges and shells ready and in
abundance.

Watching these women with their strained, anxious faces--women who cut
each thread in the shell with the accuracy of the expert--you could see
the lips of the woman murmuring, and needed no confession from her that
she was silently praying for the man who would use this weapon to defend
her beloved France, her aged mother and her little child.

When the beast is slain and the Potsdam gang tried and executed for
their crimes, and the boys come home with trumpets and banners, the
ovations will be for the soldiers; but after the soldiers have had their
parade and their honour and their ovation on the first day of the
triumph, there should be a second great parade, in which, while the
soldiers stand on the streets and observe, and the merchants and working
men and the professional classes stand as spectators, down the street
shall march the munition girls, who fashioned the weapons with which the
soldiers slew the common enemy.

For while the boys at the front have defended liberty the girls at home
have armed the soldiers. Neither one without the other could have made
the world safe for democracy.

Through the imagination these women have a right, while they toil, to
watch the shell complete their work. The smith who forges the chain for
the ship's anchor has a right to exult when he looks out through his
imagination upon the great boat held firm by his chain in the hour when
the storm threatened to hurl the craft upon the rocks. The inventor has