But the stubbornness, the discipline, the sacrifice of the armies in the
field are not all we want. The stubbornness of the nation _at home_, of
the men and the women, is no less necessary to the great end. In these
early days of March every week's news was bringing home to England the
growing peril of the submarine attack. Would the married women, the
elder women of the nation, rise to the demand for personal thought and
saving, for _training_--in the matter of food--with the same eager
goodwill as thousands of the younger women had shown in meeting the
armies' demand for munitions? For the women heads of households have it
largely in their hands.
The answer at the beginning of March was matter for anxiety. It is still
matter for anxiety now--at the beginning of May.
Let us, however, return for a little to the Army. What would the
marvellous organisation which England has produced in three years avail
us, without the spirit in it,--the body, without the soul? All through
these days I have been conscious, in the responsible men I have been
meeting, of ideals of which no one talks, except when, on very rare
occasions, it happens to be in the day's work like anything else to talk
of ideals--but which are, in fact, omnipresent.
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