I
have said that those of us who stayed at home to do the work of
organization and supply will always wish that we had been with the men
whom we sustained by our labor; but we can never be ashamed. It has been
an inspiring thing to be here in the midst of fine men who had turned
aside from every private interest of their own and devoted the whole of
their trained capacity to the tasks that supplied the sinews of the
whole great undertaking! The patriotism, the unselfishness, the
thoroughgoing devotion and distinguished capacity that marked their
toilsome labors, day after day, month after month, have made them fit
mates and comrades of the men in the trenches and on the sea. And not
the men here in Washington only. They have but directed the vast
achievement. Throughout innumerable factories, upon innumerable farms,
in the depths of coal mines and iron mines and copper mines, wherever
the stuffs of industry were to be obtained and prepared, in the
shipyards, on the railways, at the docks, on the sea, in every labor
that was needed to sustain the battle lines men have vied with each
other to do their part and do it well. They can look any man-at-arms in
the face, and say, we also strove to win and gave the best that was in
us to make our fleets and armies sure of their triumph!
"And what shall we say of the women--of their instant intelligence,
quickening every task that they touched; their capacity for organization
and co-operation, which gave their action discipline and enhanced the
effectiveness of everything they attempted; their aptitude at tasks to
which they had never before set their hands; their utter
self-sacrificing alike in what they did and in what they gave? Their
contribution to the great result is beyond appraisal.
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