Women and War Work

But the purely financial side of war savings is not the most important one. We talk in terms of money but the reality is not money but goods and services. The problem before our Governments and the problem that cannot be left to our children (though the debts incurred in securing the credits may be) is the problem of finding every day over $30,000,000 worth of material and labour for the struggle. War savings among the people is not only essential to secure the money needed—it is far more essential from the point of view of securing the cutting down of the consumption of goods and labour by our peoples.

Economists in peace time argue over what is termed "luxury" expenditure, the wasteful expenditure of peace. War expenditure may be correctly termed wasteful to a very great extent, and no country can carry both of these expenditures and remain solvent. Luxury expenditure should be entirely eliminated and the material and labour which was absorbed by it should go into the war. If this could be done completely, little damage would be done to the nation's economic position. The thing to be clearly realized is that all the productive effort of the nation is needed for three things—the carrying on of the war—the production of necessaries and the manufacture of goods for export. Every civilian who uses material and labour unnecessarily makes these tasks harder and goes into the markets as an unfair competitor of the Government. Every man and woman who saves five dollars and lends it to their country give their country what is far more important than the five dollars. They transfer to the Government the five dollars worth of material and labour they could have used up if they had spent it on themselves and that is its real value. This means the needful purchases of the State are substituted for, instead of added to, the purchases of the civilian.

Further, the influence of economy in preventing undue inflation of currency and consequent high prices should be realized. A certain amount of high prices in war is inevitable but if civilians buy extravagantly, competition becomes intense and prices rise beyond all need. The supplies are limited—in our case that is greatly added to by the submarine menace—and the demands of the Government are enormous. The competition between the Government and the people grows more and more intense. Prices go still higher. The Government pays more than it should and so do the people. Higher wages are demanded with consequent higher prices, and so you get a vicious circle that gets more and more dangerous. If the civilian will relieve this pressure by demanding less, and cutting down his expenditure, prices will become more reasonable and the cost of the war less.

The chief difficulty in time of war is to make people realize the need of economy when they have, as our people have, more money than ever before, when enormous sums of money pour out ceaselessly to the people from the Government. They have to realize the fundamental difference between peace prosperity and war prosperity. Peace prosperity comes from the creation of wealth. War prosperity comes from the dissipation of wealth—the use of all resources—the pledging of credits. It is just as if we, as individuals, to meet a personal crisis, took all our personal savings and borrowed all we could and proceeded to spend it. The wise man or woman will save all of it they can and realize that every unnecessary dollar spent helps the enemy. No civilian in a struggle of this kind has any moral right to more than necessary things. We want every man and woman to have all they need for their efficiency. We would not say for one moment that every one can save, and money spent on clothing and feeding the children and keeping the home comfortable is well spent, but nothing should be wasted.

The standard in this matter should be set by the rich, on whom rests the greatest responsibility, moral and social. It is impossible to expect workers to save if they see luxury and extravagance everywhere round them. One cannot too strongly say that.

The civilians who work hard to produce, who have done heavy toil in munitions and industry, and receive good wages and then go out and spend it lavishly might just as well have slacked at their work. The ultimate effect is the same. They have undone the good they did. It is as if soldiers having won a trench let the Germans come back into it.

People of small means often feel that all they can save is so small that it cannot really help and wonder if the effort to save is worth while, but if every person in America saved 2 cents a day, it would amount to $730,000,000 in a year, and that would find a great deal of munitions.

Finding the money by saving finds everything, releases men for the army, finds labour and money for munitions, finds labour for ships and relieves the demands on tonnage, finds supplies. It is the fundamental service of the civilian, and no good citizen wants luxuries while soldiers and sailors need clothes and guns and ships and munitions.

Everybody, man, woman, and child, can join the great financial army and march behind our men, and women have done with us and can do everywhere a great work in this. Women are on our National Committee and doing a great deal of its organization. Our men in the trenches, in the air, at sea, endure for us what we would have said before the war was humanly unendurable. They pay for our freedom with a great price—and we send them out to pay it—in death, disablement, suffering and sacrifice. To fail in our duty behind them would be the great betrayal.

Our treasures are very small things compared with our men. Shall we give them and not our money?

CHAPTER X

FOOD PRODUCTION AND CONSERVATION

"The whole country ought to realise that we are a beleaguered city."

—The President of the Board of Agriculture.

"If you have any belief in the cause for which thousands of your fellow-countrymen have laid down their lives, you will scrape and scrape and scrape, you will go in old clothes, and old boots, and old ties until such a mass of treasure be garnered into the coffers of the Government as to secure at the end of all this tangle of misery a real and lasting settlement for Europe."

—The President of the Board of Education.

In this great struggle the food question assumes greater and greater importance.

The production of food has been affected by the raising of great armies—more than twenty million men are in arms in Europe—by the feeding of armies, for which we must, of necessity, provide food in excess of what these men would need in civil life. The ability to get the food has been made difficult for us by the submarine warfare. Thousands of tons of wheat lie in Australia, but we cannot afford ships to bring it. Tea has been very short in England, though again there are thousands of tons waiting in India. The most urgent need of the Allies is for ships and more ships. There has been great loss of tonnage and the needs of the Army and Navy absorb the service of vast numbers of the available ships. We have moved 13,000,000 men since war broke out, and the supplies and munitions they have needed, to our many fronts. Ceaselessly we move the wounded. We have to bring into Britain half our food. That we have done this, has been due to the British Navy and the Reserves—the patrols and the mine sweepers—the Fringes of the Fleet—and not least, the merchant seaman. About 6,000 merchantmen have been killed by the enemy, some with diabolical cruelty. These men are torpedoed and come into port, and go for another ship at once. On the ship on which I crossed there were seamen who had been torpedoed three times In its submarine warfare the enemy has broken every international and human law—has used "frightfulness" to its fullest extent, and the answer of our merchant seamen is to go to sea again as soon as the ship is ready, and the older men, who had retired, return to sea. The seaman of our country know the enemy. It was our Seamen's Union that refused to carry the Peace Delegates to Stockholm, and it is they and our fishermen who, in the Reserves, man the patrols and mine sweepers, and who, on our little drifters and trawlers, have fought the enemy's big destroyers—fought till they went down, refusing to surrender.

It is not strange that the best-liked poster in our Food Crusade, and the one people want everywhere, is a simple drawing of a merchant seaman, and under it the words, "We risk our lives to bring you food. It is up to you not to waste it."

The countries that can succeed best in solving the food question are the countries that will win, and the food problem will not cease, any more than many others, when peace is declared.

Very early in the war, existing organizations, such as the National Food Reform Association, and newly created ones, the National Food Economy League and the Patriotic Food League of Scotland, did a great deal of active work on food saving. They aimed at instructing in the scientific principles of the economical use of food, and issued admirable leaflets and Handbooks for Housewives and Cookery Books. A series of Exhibitions, often described as "Patriotic Housekeeping Exhibitions" were held in different parts of the country, organized generally by women's societies. One of the early ones I organized in Salisbury. Later, the Public Trustee was chairman of an Official Committee, which organized large Exhibitions in London and throughout the country. These Exhibitions had stalls showing food values with specimens, had exhibits of the most economical cooking stoves and arrangements, and exhibited every manner of time and labour saving device. They had wonderful exhibits of clothes for children made from old clothes of grown-ups, of marvellous dresses and little jerseys and caps and scarfs made from legs of old stockings. There were charming dresses and underclothing made of the very simplest materials and decorated artistically with stitching and embroidery. These were made by school girls of seven and upwards for themselves, and the Glasgow School of Art's work, done in schools there, was perfectly beautiful. The cost was shown and it was incredibly small. All sorts of things for the household in simple carpentry and upholstery, using up boxes and wood, were shown, and old tins were converted into all sorts of useful household things. Facts as to waste were made as striking as possible by demonstration. Every exhibition had a War Savings Stall and Certificates were often sold at these in large numbers, the Queen buying the first sold at the first London Exhibition.

The great feature of the Exhibitions was Food Saving and Conservation. Demonstrations in cooking and in hay-box cooking, were given and these were attended by thousands of women, Miss Petty, "The Pudding Lady," being a specially attractive demonstrator. She was called "The Pudding Lady," first by little children in London in the East End, where she used to go into the homes, and show them how to cook on their own fires, and with their own meagre possessions. When she came there was pudding, so her title came as a result.

We always included exhibits and posters on the care of the babies and the children. Lectures on vegetable and potato growing, bee and poultry keeping, etc., were also given.

There were competitions in connection with the Exhibitions—prizes were offered for the best cake—for the best war bread—for the best dinners for a family at a small cost—for the best weekly budgets of different small incomes—for the best blouse and dress made at a small cost, etc., and these were extremely popular. The prizes were generally War Savings Certificates or labour-saving devices.

From the Governmental point of view the Food work is in two great divisions: Food Production, which is worked by the Food Production Department of the Board of Agriculture, of which the Women's Branch is doing the work of placing women on the land. It not only works on the production of more food but it organizes the conservation of food, such as fruit bottling, and preserving fruit, and vegetable and fruit drying, etc.

A very great deal has been done in demonstrating how to conserve fruit and vegetables all over the country and this has been done to an extent hitherto quite unreached. Co-operative work has been done and most interesting experiments made. The glass bottles necessary have been secured by the Department, and are sold by them to those doing the conservation at a fixed price. Last summer the Sugar Commission also arranged to sell sufficient sugar for making preserves to those people who grow their own fruit. This they succeeded in doing to a very large extent—which was a most valuable conservation.

The Ministry of Food is the other great body dealing with all food problems of supply, price, regulations, and propaganda.

Lord Rhondda is our Food Controller. Our first Controller was Lord Devonport. Food control is the most unpopular work in any country and a Food Controller deserves the help, sympathy and support of every good citizen. No Food Controller, no matter how able, and no matter how great and comprehensive his powers are, can do his work without the co-operation of the people.

Lord Rhondda's powers are very great as to control of supplier prices and regulations. The price of the four pound loaf (and it must be four pounds) is fixed by our Government at 18 cents and the loss is borne by the Government.

The prices of meat, beans, cheese, tea, sugar, milk, and the profits on other articles are regulated by the Ministry. When Lord Devonport was Food Controller we had courses at lunch and dinner limited—a policy most people felt to be stupid as it meant a run on staple foods—and it was abandoned by Lord Rhondda. We had meatless days, which also have been stopped. We found it difficult to do, and impossible to regulate. We had many potatoless days last spring—by regulation in the restaurants—perforce by most of us in towns where they were almost impossible to get, but this year we have the biggest potato crop we have had.

In restaurants and hotels now supplies are regulated. No one can have more than two ounces of bread at any meal, and the amount of flour and sugar supplied is strictly rationed to the hotels, according to the number served. Not more than five ounces of meat (before cooking) can be served at any meal. These regulations are strictly enforced, and the duty of seeing all the regulations are carried out, and all the work done, devolves upon the Local Food Control Committees which have been set up all over the country under the Ministry, by the local authorities. On every such Committee there must be women. They fix prices for milk, etc., and initiate prosecutions for infringements of the laws regulating food.

No white flour is sold or used in Britain. The mills are all controlled by the Government and all flour is now war grade, which means it is made of about 70 per cent white flour and other grains, rye, corn (which we call maize), barley, rice-flour, etc., are added. We expect to mill potato flour this year. Oatmeal has a fixed price, 9 cents a pound, in Scotland, 10 cents in England. No fancy pastries, no icing on cakes and no fancy bread may be made. Only two shapes of loaf are allowed—the tin loaf and the Coburg. Cakes must only have 15 per cent sugar and 30 per cent war grade flour. Buns and scones and biscuits have regulations as to making, also.

Butter is very scarce and margarine supplies not always big enough, and we have tea and sugar and margerine queues in our big towns—women standing in long rows waiting. It is an intolerable waste of time—and yet it seems difficult to get it managed otherwise.

The woman in the home in our country with high prices, want of supplies, and her desire to economise has had a busy and full time, but our people are quite well fed. Naturally enough, considering the hard work we are all doing, our people are really using more, not less food, but waste is being fought very well.

Waste is a punishable offence and if you throw away bread or any good food, you will be proceeded against, as many have been, and fined 40/- to £100. No bread must be sold that is not twelve hours baked. New bread is extravagant in cutting and people eat more. It is interesting to note that in one period of the Napoleonic wars we did the same thing and ate no new bread.

Food hoarding is an offence and the food is commandeered and the hoarder punished. Several people have been fined £50 and upwards.

The work of the Army in economizing food has been a great work. Rations have been cut down and much more carefully dealt with. The use of waste products has become a science. All the fats are saved—even the fats in water used in washing dishes are trapped and saved. The fats are used to make glycerine, and last year the Army saved enough waste fat to make glycerine for 18,000,000 shells. Fats and scraps for pigs, and bones, etc., are all sold and one-third of the money goes back to the men's messing funds to buy additional foods and every camp tries to beat the other in its care and efficiency and the women cooks are doing admirably in this work.

Officers of the Navy and Army are only permitted to spend a certain amount on meals in restaurants and hotels—3/6 for lunch and 5/6 for dinner and 1/6 for tea.

The other side of the Food Campaign is the propaganda and educative work. Lord Rhondda has two women Co-Directors with him—Mrs. C.S. Peel and Mrs. M. Pember Reeves—in the Ministry of Food, and they help in the whole work and very specially with the educational and propaganda work, and with the work of communal feeding.

A number of communal kitchens have been established with great success—many being in London. At these thousands of meals are prepared—soups and stews, fish, and meats, and puddings, every variety of dishes, and the purchasers come to the kitchens and bring plates and jugs to carry away the food. Soups are sold from 2 to 4 cents for a jugful, and other things in proportion. These are established under official recognition, the Municipalities in most cases providing the initial cost. The prices paid cover the cost of food and cooking, and the service is practically all voluntary.

The first propaganda work was, as I have said, done by the War Savings Committees, and our big task was to try to make our people realize how undesirable it is to have to resort to compulsory rationing. We are rationed on sugar and we do not want to adopt more compulsory rationing than is necessary. Compulsory rationing, in some people's minds, seems to ensure supplies. It does not and where, under voluntary rationing, people go round and find other food and get along with the supplies there are, under compulsory rationing there would always be a tendency to demand their ration and to make trouble about the lack of any one commodity in it.

Compulsory rationing to be workable must be a simple scheme, and no overhead ration of bread, for example, is just. The needs of workers vary and so do the needs of individuals, and bread is the staple food of our poorer classes. They have less variety of foods and need more bread than the better-off people. Compulsory rationing may have to come, but most of us are determined it will not come till it is really unavoidable and we are appealing to our people to prevent that, and masses of them are economizing and saving in a manner worthy of the greatest praise.

The rationing we appealed to our people to get down to, was three pounds of flour per head in the week, 2½ lbs. of meat and ½ lb. sugar.

The King's Pledge, which we had signed by those willing to do this, all over the country, pledged people to cut down their consumption of grain by one-quarter in the household, and the King's Proclamation urged this, and economies in grain and horse feeding.

An old Proclamation of the 18th century appealed to our people to cut down their consumption of their grains by one-third and was almost identical in form, and copies signed by Edmund Burke and other famous people were shown in our Thrift Exhibitions in Buckinghamshire.

We arranged meetings for the maids of households in big groups to explain the need and meaning of economy in food with great success. Every head of a household knows that the maids can make or mar one's efforts to save food, and we have found many of ours admirable, and willing to do wonders in the way of economy and saving.

If compulsory rationing in more than sugar comes as it may, the basis of rationing will, we believe, be worked out with as much consideration as possible of the needs of the workers.

Our Co-operative movement is, in a simple way rationing its buyers, by regulating supplies, and it is in voluntary work of that kind, which is going on extensively, and in the people's own efforts and economies that our great hope lies.

The Ministry of Food arranges meetings and sends speakers to associations and bodies of every kind. The schools are very extensively used for demonstrations to which the parents are invited. The children are talked to and write essays on food and general saving and in these, one little girl of seven told us, "If you don't throw away your crusts, you will beat the Kaiser," and another small boy said, "Boys should give up sliding for the war, as it wears out their boots," and another said, "We should not go to picture houses so much—once a week is quite often enough." One little child who had been coached at school returned home to see a baby sister of two throw away a big crust and said, "If Lord Rhondda was here, wouldn't he give you a row." So the root of the matter seems to be in the youth of our country and the sweetness and willingness of their sacrifices is very fragrant. They sing about saving bread and saving pennies, and to hear a choir of Welsh children sing these songs, with a vigour and enjoyment that is infectious, is quite delightful.

Most of our big girls' schools have given up buying sweets, and when they get gifts of them send them to the prisoners and the soldiers. We have, of course, restricted our manufacture of sweets very much.

Our school children have, in addition, worked enormous numbers of school gardens and grown tons of potatoes and vegetables.

Our distilleries are taken over by the Government for spirits for munitions and our beer is cut down very greatly. Travelling kitchens go out from the Ministry of Food also and do demonstrations in villages and country districts on cooking and conservation. The Ministry issues leaflets of recipes and instructions in cooking and has a special Win the War Cookery Book. Articles are also published on food values and quite a number of people begin to understand something about calories, even though they are rather vague about what it all means.

Naturally most of the Food speaking and work is done by women though food control and saving is men's and women's work.

This year we saved grain by collecting the horse chestnuts, a work that was done by the school children. These are crushed and the oil used for munitions and it was reckoned we could save tens of thousands of tons of grain by doing this.

A wonderful work in the use of waste materials has been the work of the Glove Waistcoat Society, to which American women have kindly sent old gloves. Old gloves are cleaned, the fingers are cut off, the other big pieces stitched together and cut into waistcoats and backed by linenette. These are sold to the soldiers and sailors for wear under their tunics and are most beautifully light and windproof. The fingers of kid gloves are made into glue, of wash leather gloves into rubbers for household use. The big pieces of linenette over are made into dust sheets and the small scraps go to stuff mattresses for a Babies' Home. The buttons are carded and sold and the making up provides work for distressed elderly women. It needs no funds—it is self-supporting—it only needs old gloves.

In preventing waste and in food production and conservation, our people have learned much, and a very great deal of admirable work is being done.

CHAPTER XI

THE WOMEN'S ARMY AUXILIARY CORPS

The Waacs is the name we all know them by and shall, it seems, continue to. It will have to go into future dictionaries beside Anzac.

The deeds of the Anzacs in Gallipoli and France are immortalised in many records—magnificently in John Masefield's "Gallipoli"—an epic in its simplicity. The work of the Waacs is the work of support and substitution and its records only begin to be made.

The Women's Army Auxiliary Corps is an official creation of this year. At the Women's Service Demonstration in the Albert Hall in January, 1917, Lord Derby asked for Women for clerical service in the army and official appeals were issued in February and repeatedly since that time, and now all over the country we have Recruiting Committees organizing meetings and securing recruits. They are recruiting at the rate of 10,000 a month.

The Waacs had many forerunners in some of our voluntary organizations, in the Women's Reserve Ambulance, of "The Green Cross Society," attached to the National Motor Volunteers—the Women's Volunteer Reserve—the Women's Legion—the Women's Auxiliary Force and the Women Signallers Territorial Corps. The Women's Signallers Corps had as Commandant-in-Chief Mrs. E.J. Parker—Lord Kitchener's sister. They believed women should be trained in every branch of signalling and that men could be released for the firing line by women taking over signalling work at fixed stations. Their prediction came true more than two years later, for today they are in France. They drilled and trained the women in all the branches of signalling semaphore—flags, mechanical arms; and in Morse—flags, airline and cable, sounder (telegraphy), buzzer, wireless, whistle, lamp and heliograph. They also learned map reading—the most fascinating of accomplishments. This Corps had the distinction of introducing "wireless" for women in England in connection with its Headquarters training school. When one of the Corps later accepted a splendid appointment as wireless instructor at a wireless telegraph college—the Corps was duly elated.

The Women's Reserve Ambulance had the distinction of being the first ambulance on the scene in the first serious Zeppelin Raid in London (September, 1915). They came to where the first bombs fell, killing and wounding, and did the work of rescue, and when another ambulance arrived later, "Thanks," said the police, "the ladies have done this job."

They worked assisting the War Hospital Supply Depots, that wonderful organization run by Miss MacCaul, they provided orderlies to serve the meals and act as housemaids, and make the men welcome at Peel House, one of the Canadian Clubs. Others helped in Hospitals, washing up and doing other work.

Others met and moved wounded—others at night took the soldiers to the Y.M.C.A. huts. The Women's Volunteer Reserve, too, seemed to be everywhere doing all sorts of useful, helpful things—disciplined, ready, and trained. The Women's Legion led the way in providing cooks and waitresses for camps and sent out 1,200 of these inside a year. The first convalescent camp to have all its cooking and serving done by women was managed—admirably, too—by the Women's Legion, so the Waacs had many voluntary forerunners, who are mostly in it and amalgamated with it now.

The Waacs are a part of the Army organization—are in His Majesty's Forces and when a girl joins she is subject to army rules and regulations. They are working now in large numbers in England and in France, at all the base towns, and in quiet places, where things that matter are planned and initiated.

The girl who goes to France knows she is going to possible danger by being handed, before she goes, her two identification discs.

For France, no woman under twenty or over forty is eligible. After volunteering, they are chosen by Selection Boards and medically examined. They receive a grant for their uniforms. The workers wear a khaki coat-frock—a very sensible garment—brown shoes and soft hat and a great coat. At the end of a year they get a £5 ($25) bonus on renewing their contracts, and they get a fortnight's leave in a year.

Their payment is not high—it works out about the same as a soldier's when everything is paid—and that, with us, is just over 25 cents a day, so the khaki girl, like the soldier, does not work for the money.

The whole organization is officered and directed by women. Mrs. Chalmers Watson, M.D., C.B.E., is the Chief Controller, with Miss MacQueen as Assistant Chief Controller. Under them are the Controllers—Area, Recruiting, etc., and the officer in charge of a unit is called an Administrator, and under her are deputy administrators and assistant-administrators. They are not given Military titles and do not hold commissions, but their appointments are gazetted in the ordinary way. There is always a strong feeling in England that Military and Naval titles should be strictly reserved.

The equivalent of a sergeant is a "forewoman," and there are quartermistresses in charge of stores. Rank is shown as among the men, by badges, rose and fleur-de-lys.

Administrators are being trained in large numbers. They have a short course of drilling, learn to fill up Army forms, make out pay sheets, how to requisition for rations, catering generally, and how to run a hostel. They also attend practical lectures on hygiene and sanitation. When this is done, they go to camp for a fortnight's training under an administrator in actual charge of a Unit. If they have not done well in this course, they are not appointed.

An administrator receives a $100 grant for her uniform and is paid from $600 to $875 a year out of which $200 is deducted for food. There is generally one officer to every fifty women.

The administrator must drill her girls. The W.A.A.C. is proud of its tone and its discipline. Its officers make the girls feel much is expected of them, because of the uniform they wear, and the girls have made a fine response. There are very few rules and as little restraint as possible. The girls are put on their honour when not under supervision. The administrator has considerable disciplinary powers, but they are very little needed.

It does not seem to be by discipline that the officer succeeds best. There is a nice story told of an Administrator who had been away from her unit some days, returning and being met at the station by one of the rank and file who had come for her bag.

"I am glad to see you, Ma'am," was the greeting, so emphatic a one that the Administrator inquired nervously if something were wrong.

"Oh, no. Seems as if Mother had been away, Ma'am," explained the girl.

The Administrator can help her girls by sorting them out well, putting friends and the same kind of girls together; it makes so much difference.

The Administrator has not only to handle her own sex—she has to deal with men officers and quartermasters, and she succeeds in doing that well, too.

Our Administrators are naturally women of education and carefully chosen and there is plenty of opportunity of rising "from the ranks."

The girls cross over to France on the gray transports, are received by the women Draft Receiving Officers, and go up the lines to their assigned posts.

The women are billeted in some of the base towns in pensions and summer hotels that have been commandeered, in big houses and in one case in a beautiful old Chateau where the ghosts of dead-and-gone ladies of beauty and fashion must wonder what kind of women these khaki clad girls are. The girls in these make their rooms home-like with photographs, hangings, and little personal belongings.

The greater number of girls live in camps, and different types of huts have been tried. Some of the camps are entirely of wooden huts—large and roomy. Other camps have the Nissen hut of corrugated iron, lined with laths wood floored and raised from the ground. These have been linked together in the cleverest way by covered ways. In the sleeping huts the beds are iron bedsteads with springs and horse-hair mattresses. Each bed has four thoroughly good blankets and a pillow. No sheets are given—there is no labour to wash the thousands of sheets, and the cotton is needed. Each woman has a wooden locker with a shelf above, and a chair. Washing and bathing is done in separate huts, and in every camp hot and cold water is laid on.

The mess room is a big hut. The girls wait on themselves and the food is excellent. They receive in rations the same as the soldiers on lines of communication—four-fifths of a fighting man's ration and whatever is over is returned and credited, and the extra money is used for luxuries, games and for entertaining visitors from other camps.

Here is a typical week's meals and it shows how well they are fed:

MONDAY.—Breakfast: Tea, bread, butter, baked mince, jam. Dinner: Cold beef, potatoes, tomatoes, baked apples, custard. Tea: Tea, bread, butter, jam. Supper: Welsh rarebit, bread, butter, jam.

TUESDAY.—Breakfast: Tea, bread, butter, boiled ham, marmalade. Dinner: brown onion stew, potatoes, baked beans, biscuit pudding. Tea: Tea, bread, butter, jam, cheese. Supper: Savoury rice, tea, bread.

WEDNESDAY.—Breakfast: Tea, bread, butter, veal loaf. Dinner: Roast mutton, potatoes, marrow, bread pudding. Tea: Tea, bread, butter, marmalade, jam. Supper: Rissoles, bread, butter, cheese.

THURSDAY.—Breakfast: Tea, bread, butter, fried bacon. Dinner: Meat pie, potatoes, cabbage, custard and rice. Tea: Tea, bread, butter, jam. Supper: Soup, bread and jam.

FRIDAY.—Breakfast: Tea, bread, butter, rissoles, marmalade. Dinner: Boiled beef, potatoes and onions, Dundee roll. Tea: tea, bread, butter, jam, slab cake. Supper: Shepherd's pie, tea, bread, butter.

SATURDAY.—Breakfast: Tea, bread, butter, boiled ham, jam. Dinner: Thick brown stew, potatoes and cabbage, bread pudding. Tea: Tea, bread, butter, jam, cheese. Supper: Toad-in-hole, bread jam.

SUNDAY.—Breakfast: Tea, bread, butter, fried bacon. Dinner: Roast beef, potatoes and cabbage, stewed fruit, custard. Tea: Tea, bread, butter, jam. Supper: Soup, bread, butter, cheese.

They are divided into five big classes for work. There are large numbers of them cooks and waitresses, and many of these cooks come from the best private houses in England, so the Waacs and the soldiers fare well. In one camp in the early days sixty women cooks walked in and sixty men out, released for the fighting lines. The saving in fats done by the women is very great and their economies admirable and the women are waitresses in the camps and messes.

In one base in France when twenty-nine cooks came to take charge in the early days the commanding officer issued an order that expresses very well the spirit in which the women are regarded.

BASE DEPOT.

The Officer Commanding Base Depot wishes to draw the attention of all ranks to the following points in connection with the Domestic Section of the Women's Auxiliary Army, which is employed in this depot:

These women have not come out for the sake of money, as their pay is that of a private soldier. In nearly every case they have lost someone dear to them in this war, and they are out here to try to do their best to make things more comfortable for the men in regard to their food.

It, therefore, is up to all ranks to make their lot an easy and not a hard one during their stay in France. If any man should so forget himself as to use bad language or at any time to be rude to them, it is up to any of his comrades standing by to shut him up, and see that he does not repeat this offence.

To the older men I would say: Treat them as you would your own daughters. To the younger men: Treat them as you would your own sisters.

——, Comdg., Base Depot.

They are doing the clerical work more and more, and in a few weeks have become so technical that they know where to send requisitions concerning 9.2 guns or trench mortars or giant howitzers. There is a favourite story told against an early Waac that when a demand came for armoured hose, she sent it to the clothing department, but she knows better now.

French girls are also helping in the clerical department, working side by side with the Waacs.

Others, the telegraphists and telephonists are in the Signalling Corps and these are the only ones who wear Army badges. They work under the Officers Commanding Signals and are so successful that the officers want thousands more.

Another small group are called the "Hush Waacs." There are only about a dozen of them and they have come from the Censor's Office and between them have a thorough knowledge of all modern languages. They are decoding signalled and written messages, script of every kind.