AMERICAN WOMEN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 August 1941, Page 2

AMERICAN WOMEN

WANT TO HELP IN DEFENCE. Women in America are asking what they can do for national defence, and how they can play their part. According to a report from the Washington bureau of the “Christian Science Monitor” a “home defence" plan answering those questions was promised some months ago by President Roosevelt, but has not yet been released. While waiting for the long-heralded programme, women of the U.S.A, are not idle, but have not had the benefit of co-ordinated leadership such as has underlain the valiant contribution of the Women’s ' Voluntary Services to British morale and safety.

Women’s efforts to date towards the defence of America fall roughly into four fields—in defence industries, on the home front, in the military services, and in bolstering morale. Women employed in aeroplane factories, powder plants, and shell loading depots are comparatively few at the present time, but the U.S. Employment Service has indicated that a great many would become adept at certain processes with a little training.

It is on the home front that American women are busiest, sewing and knitting for Britain, learning to be nurses and to drive ambulances. The American Rod Cross has more than 1,000,000 women now working as volunteer relief-givers. The drafts of plans submitted to Mr Roosevelt show dozens of other jobs that women could do without, going very far from home —food preservation, Spanish lessons, map reading, etc. But these take more organisation than has yet been put into effect. Not Wanted in the Army.

The army’s general attitude towards women seems to be “let them do anything they want, just so they stay away from the army.” Numerous plans have been devised for having womenfolk don uniforms and take- on certain duties behind the lines as they are doing in England. At present all military service, except for nurses, is limited to men. Formation of a volunteer air-raid-“spotters” corps, to utilise 500,000 to 600,000 civilians as "Minutemen" for watching and listening for enemy planes, announced recently by the War Department, was hailed by General George C. Marshall as giving women their first major opportunity to participate in the defence programme. ■ The most evident job needing and obtaining women’s attention in many parts of the country is the provision, of wholesome community life for the thousands of soldiers, sailors and defence workers congregated in centres unprepared to take care of them. American women have not been marking time waiting to be told what the Government expects them to do in this defence emergency. They are eager to show that they, too, have the “sterner stuff” that has given Britain its strength.