EARNESTNESS—AND SOME CONFUSION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 150, 8 May 1942, Page 18

EARNESTNESS—AND SOME CONFUSION

American Women Organise For War

HERE is a certain amount of confusion in America’s Office of Civilian Defence, according to the newsmagazine Time. And some of it has been blamed on the head of Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, who, deciding that defence workers did not get enough recreation, led 40 or 50 of them up to her roof during lunch hours to dance Virginia Reels. "Her intentions," said one admirer, "were swell." The First Lady typified the earnestness and confusion with which U.S. women have stampeded to defence work since December 7. By last week, hundreds of thousands of *them were madly sewing, knitting, cooking, dancing, driving automobiles, thundering in aeroplanes, jump ing into fire nets. Many were just as bewildered as an elderly woman in Los Angeles who bustled into the Defence Council insisting that she wanted to make bullets. Eager women volunteers turned up in all kinds of unlikely spots. In Boston, militant women practised fire-fighting and had firemen worried over the possibility of their turning up at a fire, to get tangled in hoses. Members of the Women’s Ambulance and Defence Corps of Los Angeles, in khaki suits with Sam Browne belts, appeared at the sheriff's office on the night of December 7, saluted smartly, and announced to the startled sheriff that they were reporting for duty. (The sheriff sent them home).

In Chicago, Mrs. John Alden Carpenter, wife of the composer, sat gazing into space. Her job as head of the Women’s Division of the Defence Savings Department awed her. Said she: "We are in the process of organising, and we are simply going to sell millions of bonds when we get started. I’m sure you realise that the upper classes cannot do all of the work." Of all the volunteer groups, the one that made the most noise was the American Women’s Voluntary Services, founded by Mrs. Alice Throckmorton McLean. She had modelled A.W.V.S. on the British Women’s Voluntary Services. ; ; Mrs. McLean nailed her colours to the mast on the day New York had its first air-raid alarm, The alarm was false, but Mrs. McLean, already at her "post," declared: "We shall remain on duty 24 hours. Our Motor Corps and Emergency Kitchen will be drawn up outside the door ready to rush to any spot where there is a disaster. I have sent women downtown to hunt for tin helmets, and others are sewing armbands on their uniforms, I shall stay here all night." Finger-Polish And Hair-Do Eight official A.W.V.S. uniforms included breeches and boots for the cycle corps, ski-troop suits for workers in the Far North (spotters, dog-sled teamsters in Saranac, N.Y., Alaska, etc.). For A.W.V.S. fingernails, light polish was prescribed; hair-do: simple, preferably short, up off the neck. In a huge, dishevelled loft in Manhattan, short-haired A.W.V.S. women in slate-blue uniforms received applications. Volunteers had numerous wartime careers to choose from: navigation, aerial photography, truck driving, etc. The work of the A.W.V.S. sometimes overlapped the work of the Red Cross, sometimes duplicated the work of the Office of Civilian Defence. Other organisations had already been busy for some time. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union’s Soldiers and Sailors Department, led by Mrs. (Continued on next page)

U.S. WOMEN AND WAR ‘(Continued from previous page) Ella P. Christner, rushed forward with a cookie-jar crusade. In four months, 34,515 cookies were given away outside Fort Dix. The Liberty Belles, of San Antonio, Texas, were not content just to stand. They "danced for their country" at soldiers’ balls and Army post parties; senior hostesses gave arf average of four evenings a week for "the morale of the Army." Not content to stand and wait either were thousands of Junior Leaguers and the Women Flyers of America. Uniforms blossomed on all sides. Vogue ecstatically proclaimed: "This is our new life. This is what we have to do. .. And whatever our duties are, one of the symbols of our new double-duty lives is the uniform. The uniform stands for our new spine of purpose, our initiative in getting women working, splaying out into hundreds of different jobs, to find talents which have been mossed over. It means, that we know that it is time to stop all the useless little gestures, to stop» being the Little Women and be women." Real Jobs to Do Despite some examples of futility, many women managed to do worthwhile jobs without noise, and even without uniforms, Buried away in secret offices in cities along the seccoast were the women of the Information and Filter Centres, listening to telephoned reports

of aircraft, marking every ’plane’s flight on maps. Their hours were long, their jobs dull, but some day they might be vital to air-raid defence. Some of them were Junior Leaguers, but the majority were stenographers, teachers, young housewives. The boss of these unpaid workers, who slaved without uniforms or frou-frou, was the Army. Calm through all the clamour, aloof to cracks from the A.W.V.S., noncommittal on the subject of Mrs, Roosevelt reeling on a roof, was the American Red Cross. Since war’s beginning, some 2,500,000 women had signed up for its 14 definite, well-established volunteer programmes. Many of its executives were men, but head of the Volunteer Special Services was small, white-haired Mrs. Dwight F. Davis (wife of the one-time Secretary of War). Its hard-working ranks were filled for the most part by women. The Red Cross also had its Motor Corps. More important were thousands of women in production. centres who whipped up hospital garments, diapers, children’s clothing and made millions of surgical dressings for the armed forces, Nurses’ Aide Corps taught women to take over the routine jobs of nursing, to free trained nurses for other jobs. A blood-donors’ service filled blood banks for transfusions, With few delusions about women’s greatest talents, officials stressed three prosaic training courses for housewives who wanted to help: First Aid, Home Nursing, Nutrition.