Page:Scouting for girls, adapted from Girl guiding.djvu/226

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SCOUTING FOR GIRLS

found that they could do well in professions and industries; they found that careers were open to them. Girls found at last that they had the power to make some use of their lives instead of drifting through them aimlessly and getting only a very hollow enjoyment out of them.

THE CITIZEN SCOUT

One of the most notable English statesman said in the fourth year of the Great War:

"I am anxious to bear testimony to the tremendous part played by the women in England in this vital epoch of human history. They have not only borne their burden of sorrow and separation with unflinching fortitude and patience but they have an enormous share of the burdens necessary to the practical conduct of the war.

"To their ennobling influence we look not only for strength to win the war, but for inspiration during the great work of reconstruction we will have to undertake after victory is won."

This is becoming true in American also. Never before have our national ideals been so clearly defined; never before have we realized the relative values of life.

One hundred years ago democracy was a masculine noun. Women worked loyally in the home for husband, son and brother. The war came and suddenly they found themselves working for all men who were holding high the ideals of the American home and the American nation. By assuming these responsibilities, women have