SPLENDID AMERICAN WOMEN

Otago Witness, Issue 3333, 30 January 1918, Page 53

SPLENDID AMERICAN WOMEN

A MILLION MOBILISED. Walking down Madison avenue, one of New York's famous highways, a few days ago, writes Miss G. I. Sandere in the Daily Telegraph, I was attracted to a large house, No. 257, by the continual coming and going of women in khaki. Up and down the brown stone steps they hurried, obviously intent upon earnest business, and my thoughts were transported to England, and to our" members of the Women's Ambulance, Women's Legion and Women's Volunteer Reserve, 'wearing a similar trim military uniform of khaki, and moving with the same alertness and smartness that comes of drill and discipline. Over the doorway the Stars and Stripes hung, brilliant in the hot morning sunshine; and engraved on the portals wore the enlightening words: "Headquarters of the Women's League of National Service." _ I entered, and found the largo hall, with its handsome, wide, open staircase, filled with women eager to enrol for service, with women" busy upon various tasks —typewriting, addressing envelopes, and packing parcels of comforts and surgical dressings for the troops,—and with yet more women awaiting orders for some one of the many branches of the league's service, _ which includes social and welfare division, homo economics, business 'women's division, motor division, overseas relief division. In a word, the extent and range of the activity of American womanhood have come ns a complete' revelation to me, for in common, I fear, with many people at home, I had been inclined to imagine that the women's war work in this vast continent, so remote from the actual scenes of war, was practically confined to the conservation of food and the knitting of . comforts. Instead, I find over a million women onrolled in the Women's League of National Service, which h:;s as its watchword: " What English women have done American women will do." And yet this is but one —though a very important one—of the many women's organisations in the country. Hundreds moro are working for the Red. Cross, on tho Mayor's committee, the special aid committee, and for the Navy League. Legion are 1 the organisations formed to direct and utilise the feminine energy of tho country, and countless are the services they are rendering.