The Colorado statesman., 1918-08-10
Conserve Food and Buy Liberty
Bonds-TWo Ways They
Can Help.
WOMEN OF AMERICA, WAKEUP!
Pour All Your Savings Into Uncle
Sans Lap-kcep on Saving and
Pouring Until the World
Is Free.
BY INEZ HAYNES IRWIN.

BY lNEZ HAYNES IRWIN.
What can the women of America
do to help win this war; Two things
are certain; one that they can do
great deal and another that, unless
the war lasts ten years longer, they
can never do so much as the French,
English and Italian women have done,
they can never suffer so much as the
French, English and Italian women
have suffered.
To me, returning to America after
two years in the war countries. the un-
touched gayety of the American people
came as a terrific shock. i had left a
world as black and silent as night;
world in which l had seen no dancing.
a world in which | had heard no spon-
taneous laughter or-except in the case
of military bands-no music. At first
the atmosphere of America was almost
unbearable. / was obsessed with the
desire to get back to the allied cOun-
tries, to suffer with them rather than
enjoy the comparative comfort of
comparatively unaroused America.
The luxury everywhere appalled, me.
Those hundreds of motors gliding
through our streets for instance
Private motors have long ago disap-
peared from allied Europe. The beau
tiful fabrics, the furs and laces. the
gorgeous sport clothes and the dazzling
evening dresses which still distinguish
the women of America.
Ban on Evening Clothes.
The first time 1 was invited to
dinner party on my return. wore
long-sleeved high-necked gray-and-
black gown and found myself a wren
among birds of paradise. No woman
of France would think OF wearing eve
ming clothes. Indeed, both men and
women are prohibited by law from ap-
pearing in evening clothes at the thea
ter. On the few social occasions in
which they take part, French women
are dressed in black gowns with lit
tie lace at the neck and sleeves. Eng
lish women still wear evening clothes.
When their men return on their rare
leave from the front, they cover their
aching hearts with as much gayety as
possible I'm order to send them back to
the filth and the vermin and the rats
and the damp and the cold and the
wounds and the constant sight of death
psychologically refreshed. But most Of
the evening dresses that the English
women are now wearing date back to
the beginning of the war. And strang
est OF all, perhaps, for a country at
war, those lustrous streets with their
rows of electric lights and their vivid,
flashing, changing, iridescent electric
signs. In Paris. you plunge into
deep twilight when you leave your res
taurant and In London you grope your
way home through dangerous Sty-
gian gloom. Then the careless spend
ing in American hotels and restau-
rants. In Paris those places close at
half-past nine. And food! Food con-
ditions have never been so bad in
France as in the other allied coun-
tries, for France has always fed her
self and is. moreover, the worlds best
cook. But in Italy and England, meat
is a rare luxury to be obtained only
once in great while; butter and
sugar are long-forgotten dreams.
See Their Homes Destroyed.
And then in the case of France and
to some degree of Italy, the allied
women have seen vast stretches of
carefully cared-for ancient forest and
enormous sections of softly-beautiful
farming country turned into metal-rid-
den dumps they have seen dozens of
small cities and hundreds of little vii
lagos transformed to ash heaps; they
have seen so much old sacred beauty
in the form of churches, cathedrals
and historic monuments reduced TO
hills of rubble that the whole world
must seem a desert to them. They
have even had to endure the extra
affront of an exhibition in Berlin of
the art treasures looted from northern
France.
The allied women have nursed the
wounded. the tubercular, the under
nourished: they have taught new
trades to the crippled and blind and
those who are invalided for life. They
have taken care of thousands and
thousands of refugees from Belgium,
northern France and Siberia. They
have had to provide for the bringing
up of thousands of orphan children.
This has not come upon them gradual
ly, but all the time and in increasing
proportions
But. after all. these things are as
nothing to the death of the flower of
their male youth. England and France
and Italy have lost so much in man
power that no member of our genera
tion looks for happiness again during
his own lifetime! They hope only
for one thing-to insure the freedom
of the next generation.