Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1918-01-29
Hov Women Can Vim The Var
Ind HOp They Can Lose 1t.

President Wilson's appeal for greater efforts
in food saving strikes home with especial force to
the nations housewives, for it is upon their 10y
atty in the observance of wheatless and meatless
days and in other measures of patriotic economy
that the solution of the food problem, with its
vital relation to the winning of the war, chiefly
depends All that the hotels and restaurants and
other public institutions can do to conserve the
food supply amounts to merely a few crumbs COM
pared with what the country's millions of house
holds can do if they will enter intellectually
upon this imperative service. Nor will all the
hero1sm and sacrifice of soldiers, nor all the
valor and fortitude of Allies suffice for vic
tory, unless the women of America do their loyal
utmost in saving food.
The housewife who lets anything stand in the
way of her doing her full duty in this respect is
helping the Huns. 1t may require torethougnt
and may entail some inconvenience to stick faith
fully to the plan of wheatless and meatless days
1t may take a deal of diplomacy If not outright
courage to enforce this rule in homes where the
pampered meat-eating male snarls and snaps II
denied his accustomed chop steak. But the
man who isn't willing to do his bit in this way to
help win the war doesn't deserve even a cold bone
or a dog biscuit for Sunday dinner. And the wife
who cannot manage her men-kind in such matters
must surely have forgotten her wit or charm. Let
the trousered slackers gnash their teeth II they
will but don't give them meat meatless days
or wheat on wheatless days; and don't sugar
their coffee with too free hand. Let them eat
as patriots starve shirkers.,
To say that remissness in this duty amounts to
helping the Huns is by no overstate-
ment. Our soldiers must be fed if they are to
fight and our Allies must be kept from famine II
they are to stand with to the end. For three
and half years, concentrating all their energies
upon the battle front, they have borne the fiery
onslaught of German barbarity,. Their men by
the millions have been called from the burrows to
the trenches and on the Continent much of their
most productive soil has fallen into the invaders
hands Never sef-sustaining in food supplies,
these countries find themselves in the wars fourth
winter reduced to the leanest rations and trembling
at the prospect of what would come if America
should fail in timely aid The British Food Con-
trolIer officially advises Government that:
"Unless you able to send the Allies at
least seventy-ive million bushels of wheat
over and above what you have exported up to
January 1, and in addition to the export
able surplus from Canada, cannot take the
responsibility of assuring people that.
there will be enough food to win the war"
1t is only by earnest food economy in every house
hold of this land that provide the export
surplus of wheat and other staples necessary to
enable our Allies to hold out until the military
strength of the United States be thrown de-
cisively into the field. Anyone, therefore, who
"SA'N 40
indeed helping the Huns; is taking food from men
who are fighting battles and from half-fam-
ished women and children; is adding to the wars
grim cost and prolonging it's agony; is piling
higher the red sacrifice of own soldier boys
and deepening the shadows that will enwrap
American homes.
Surely, the woman of Georgia and of the
South with the example of their noble mothers in
the iron days of the Sixties shining upon them,
will not fail their country in this crucial hour.
But there must be a wider and more consistent
response to the Governments appeal for food saw
ing if urgent needs are to be met. There
must be general and steadfast adherance to the
program of wheatess and meatless days. There
must be definite and actual recognition of the fact
that these measures are essential to the winning
of the war and that the home in which they are
not faithfully observed is false to the flag. Let
every home-keeper who has ever thought upon
the anguish of Begium's women and children,
who has ever thought of what would befall her
own freside at the hands of Prussian soldiery,
who has ever thought of the American boys cher
own perhaps, amongst them who are in the
trenches or are training to go-let every woman
of this mind and heart resolve anew to do her ut
most in saving food to win and shorten the war,
and influence others to follow her patriotic ex-
ample.