Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1917-04-27
KENNEbEC VALLEY FEDERATION
LADIES' AID OF THE METHODIST
= ~. CHURCH MEETS AT AUGUSTA
that she is not the same.

| tldC SNe IS not Tie
The Madonna will never go out OF
fashion. Motherhood will ever be the
crown most honoring and by all men
the most honored. Cornelia, whose
Jewels were her children. will never
alton to her sex.
The real test of womanhood is her
ability to realize under difficulties the
ideals of a thousand generations.
think of few finer pictures than find
in many and many an unostentatious
and simple scene in the homes from
which so many of you come, where the
material income is small, and yet where
under some woman's exquisite taste,
there are the beauty and purity and
fragrance Of the very heart of a rose
flower in the window or in the modest
lawn outside, the best literature on the
shelves, refined touches in the arrange
ment of the furniture however old or
simple. the table however frugal, DEL
icate. the chamber a refreshment of
sunshine and 'peatness. and the whole
atmosphere a poem. Out of such
home. out of such a presence goes forth
the moulders and makers of Nations.
Most Of the great names that illus
trate our history have owed very little
to the mere drill and routine tasks of
the schoolroom. Have we better ex-
amples Of education than Franklin, the
wisest man Of his time; than Washing
ton, the central star Of our national
constellation: than Henry Clay, the
magnetic orator and legislative builder;
than Hamilton. who was the genius of
our federal Constitution; than Lincoln.
whom Lowell has called the First
American" than Mckinley, snatched
by the Civil War from the scholars
desk and endeared to the hearts of his
countrymen by the sympathies which
| made him the expression of their pa
triotic sentiment? What education in
the popular sense had they? None, or
next to none; and yet what great col
leges they enter-the colleges of our
free American life. contact with great
men, great problems. great interests.
How little these men and numberless
men have owed to the pages of. the
school hook! How in every walk OF
life we find men In active life, success
full in business, masters in the COM
munity, forcible in enterprise, large in
comprehension because they are edu-
Gated by the mothers of men.
The Lesson Of the War.
The war has given woman a new
place in the world, her ability to accom-
plish new tasks. Is evident She has
organized relief for the millions Of
wounded. She has met disaster with
fortitude at least equal to that of the
bravest men.
There can be no further question of
womans worthiness in the hour Of
| ri AL.
proven her equality with men in the
worlds work.
When great call goes up from the
earth FOR help along the most fund
amental reaches of life, the answer is
almost invariably made by the women
OF the world. Through motherhood
woman mas learned how to nourish and
support mankind in the great crisis.
through motherhood woman has
learned the care of the body. the care
CT the soul; she has learned that there
are times when she must comfort man.
KIND. she has learned how to leave her
home Of luxury, Of peace, of idleness
aho move out over the world with
healing in her hands. 1t is no effort for
hcr to turn back and plough the soil
and stand in the wheatfield with the
grain In her hand.
We had almost forgotten Just what
her place in the world was, how essen
tial she was, how gracious and gentle
ana sacrificing until this terrible war
swept over all Europe. and then sud
denly we found in England the woman
VINO had been clamoring for the vote
taking as badge Of opportunity. the
Red Cross, giving her life gladly and
| chQarfi1l1v n no
her the vote; we found in France the
peasant woman whom we had grown to
think Of as dull or heavy or unintel-
ligent, lifting the great agricultural
burden Of the nation: we found the
women from the Boulevard st. German
1 opening their houses In Paris when the
wounded flocked back from the Marine
we found them gladly remaining in
this city when, at the beginning of the
war, they were counting the hours be-
fore the German occupation. In Italy,
in Russia, in Bavaria, Roumania, in
Selvia. all over the great sorrowing
farm country Of Europe the women
have turned back to the plough
We read the story of the woman NUM-
ton maker with admiration for the spirit
endurance and skill which are actually
winning her not only economic ndepend-
ence but higher social status.
Yet the lesson Is even now written for
those who will read. War; which has
tested SO many of the values of our civili-
cation and found them wanting is weigh
ing woman's work in it's merciless bal
ance.
The National Womens Service, which
is teaching cookery and food conserva-
ton. the Anti-Waste campaign which
English women are waging-these may
prove to be the national defences stronger
than Zeppelns and submarines. For sucn
movements do not end with the conserva-
tion of material resources. They are
turning the isolated. wasteful drudgery
OF housework into purposeful. creative
work. Greater than waste of wealth IS
waste of work: for waste of work Is
waste of life. War, that drives men to
destroy life, is forcing women to do and
to value Alright the work that conserves
life.
Eut is all this nothing to us? Shall the
women of America look on unmoved, or
reused only to the immediate tasks that
relieve needs but stfle imaginations-to