February
Eighteenth
Nineteen eighteen.

Mrs. Clarence Johnson,
Pres. North Carolina Federation Womens’ Clubs,
Raleigh, N.C.

My dear Mrs. Johnson:-

Permit me to record my grateful appreciation of your kindly courtesy in asking me for a short message to the women of the State.

My message is this:-

1. The Allies are fighting for the sanctity of the person of woman, which sanctity is unknown to the Hun.

2. The Allies are fighting that motherhood may enter into its just rewards and may not be forever impaled on Militarism’s iron cross.

3. The Allies are fighting that the ideals of woman may live and brighten and bless the earth. Prussianism is the incarnation of brute force. A gun is its god, and its boast is that it rules with blood and iron.

The might of woman is her gentleness. Love is her imperial sceptre, and she would be without power and without place in a civilization moulded by force and colored by fear.

I have Abrahamic faith in the courage, the devotion and the sympathetic spirit of the women of North Carolina. With them to see their duty is to do it.

Just two things I would emphasize at this time:-

1. Push in every way possible the sale of war stamps. This means more for the winning of the war and the rebuilding of the State after the war than any proposition the Government has yet submitted. Of course the Liberty Loans must not be forgotten, but of necessity they are purchased by the few, while the war stamps open the door of service to the ninety and nine.

2. Do not complain about anything that the Government may do, nor permit any one else to complain in your presence. Carry out cheerfully every order of the Food and Fuel Administrators and co-operate with every movement inaugurated by the Government for the winning of the war. Of necessity there is much that we do not understand, but let’s cultivate the spirit of the Patriarch when he exclaimed, “Though he slay me yet will I trust him.”

Sincerely yours,

[unsigned]

B_G