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Show I Ways and Means I in War Times I $&vffli WBS eighteen yearn old tXk ftnd ver ardnt. ar(1 the r' ripening of hostilities be- '-jhj fure ever our country made 'yJiw lts entrance ,nto the war, - ' - t- Bhe was already training In a hospital and hoping that some day she mllii be of real service to humanity. Then the United States was called to defend democracy, and sho worked and studied harder than ever, for she realized that her country mlprbt soon be In need of rvloes And nt last she graduated, and nuro enough the call came sooner than sho expected, and she was thrilled with Lh . thought of becoming a Red Cross nurse And then, suddenly, without any warning, warn-ing, a great tragedy enmc Into her life, and she found that if sho rntcred the service ser-vice of her country she must prove delinquent delin-quent to her duties at home. I DIFFICULT DECISION. ; . t. It was a very hard decision for her to make. Indeed, it was too hard, and so she went to an old friend of her father a g n-n-al lii ili nrmy ond told hlrn her trouble. Perhaps she was a bit rebellious, for she said: "I do not see why I should cle up everything every-thing 'nd stay at home. I have studied and worked so hard for this very thing, and now my country needs me and I feel that I must serve, and yet I don't know what to do. " And tie re m looked at her squarely and said:' We don'' want an slackers in tlu-army." tlu-army." Hurt to the quick, the girl's eyes filled with tears, her cheeks crimsoned and a hot retort trembled on her Hps. But the old general laid his hand on her shoulder. "My dear," he said, "you know as well as I do where your duty lies. You must decide this thing for yourself But I want to tell you this: Don't think for a minute that those who are wearing the uniform uf the soldier or the sailor or the Red Cross nurse are serving their country any more bravely than thousands who are working at home It is not where you work, but how you work. "Your duty lies right here, it seems to me, but yoj will have some time of your lown You can do a tremendous work for your country tight In the Red Cross rooms That was many months ago. but that girl has never served her country abroad. I 'erhaps she never will. But she Is serving dall at home The mornings are filled with home duties, but in the afternoons, when another nurse is able to take, her place there, she is off on other work. One of the hardest lessons we hav to lenrn when we are young is the lesson of sacrifice. We want so to do our work In our own way, to enlist ourselves with our ssmpathles. But. we cannot always al-ways do that. The dlimity of labor is being brought home to us all. A very talenteJ woman, writing the other day to a friend, said I have come to the conclusion that nono of us can really live to the fullest unless we work with our hands. It was ' a lone time hefori T lnrrr-H thlo hnt T am beginning to reaJIze more and more the value of hard work." And that is true No matter bow brilliant bril-liant we may be, how talented, how given to helpful thought or Inspirational ideals, unless we work these ideas out In some form, unless wc make these talents live through the work of the hands, they will be of little enduring value. The wonderful thint: Is that we always get so much more out of the work than wo put into it. That Is really the only enduring payment that we do recelve--tbe Joy of the task, the glory of accom-nllshmenf I DUTY THAT LIES NEAREST. 4 , The United States has plenty of money. But there are two things it lacks food and labor. Wo must take care of these, hoard these, if victory Is to be ours. So. if you cannot serve your country aa a nurse or an ambulance driver or la some other service at the front or at the nation's capital, do not think for one minute that you cannot help. You can servo if you live in the backwoods back-woods just as well as if you live in the-city, the-city, for we can all do some useful work, and if we are faithful to the charge that lies nearest to us we shall have the satisfaction satis-faction of knowing that we have helped to win this war Just as much as if we had been fighting across the soa. |