764 State Papers and Addresses

In less direct, but equally important ways, too, women are vitally concerned
with each development of the war situation on the home defense front. Among
the nearly 200, 000 patriotic volunteers on the Maryland Air Craft Warning and
Civilian Defense rolls, a large proportion are women. As manpower is drained,
more and more dependen will have to be placed upon the women of our State
for every phase of Civilian Defense work.

In the matter of rationing, also, women will have to bear a great part of
the burden, and they can be possibly the most important single factor in bring-
ing about general patriotic acceptance, by all our people, of any restrictions
that may be necessary.

The application of sugar rationing regulations, and of gasoline rationing,
already has given the women of America a drastic example of what war econ-
omy can mean. Throughout the coming winter it is entirely possible that the
rationing of fuel oil may strike even more deeply at the hearts and minds of
every American women, but particularly of the mothers of the land, whose duty
is it to safeguard the health of their families.

That women will meet the new responsibilitites thus laid on them is un-
questioned. They have given ample evidence of their patriotism and good will
in the readiness with which they have responded to the calls already made in
connection with the war effort.

Through the school teachers of the Country, likewise, they have given
remarkable illustration of a readiness to go to great lengths to help accomplish
the things that must be done. In the registration of men under the Selective
Service and occupational classifications, and more recently in the registration
of our people for sugar and gasoline rationing, women have made a contribution
to the National war effort whose value cannot properly be evaluated.

Ruling at home, as women of America do; charged with the very direct
responsibility of training and educating the great masses of our millions of
school children, the mothers and the school teachers of America can be, and I
know will be, the mainstays of our National morale, just as their sisters and
daughters in the airplane factories and all the other varied war industries as-
sume an increasing share of the war production load. How much greater that
share will become, time alone can tell.

It is to the business and professional women who have been trained for
leadership, that America must look for particular help in times like these. Per-
haps more than other women, they realize what it is that America has that other
countries and other peoples lack. They appreciate perhaps better than the
average women what Poland and the other ravaged countries have lost when
they lost their God-given right of self-determination.

There is nothing so valuable in this world as American freedom. There
is. no sacrifice too great, no price too high, to pay for the preservation of America.
Not only is the fate of 130, 000, 000 Americans at stake in this fight, but the whole
future of civilization is in the balance. America MUST win, America WILL
win, because it is absolutely unthinkable that Providence would permit the