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Mobilizing Woman-Power by Harriot Stanton Blatch
page 90 of 143 (62%)

Not only is there call for a pooling of brains to look after the timid
and unready, but there is need of combination to open the gates for the
prepared and brave. Few who cheered the Red Cross nurses as they made
their stirring march on Fifth Avenue, knew that those devoted women
would, on entering the Military Nurse Corps, find themselves the only
nurses among the Allies without a position of honor. The humiliation to
our nurses in placing them below the orderlies in the hospitals is not
only a blow to their esprit de corps, but a definite handicap to their
efficiency. A nurse who was at the head of the nursing staff in a state
hospital wrote from the front: "There is one thing the Nursing Committee
needs to work for, and work hard, too, and that is, to make for nurses
the rank of lieutenant. The Canadians have it, why not the Americans?
You will find that it will make a tremendous difference. You see, there
are no officers in our nursing personnel. One of our staff says we are
the hired extras! It is really a great mistake." Uncle Sam may merely be
waiting for a concentrated drive of public opinion against his tardy
representatives.

[Illustration: Down the street they come, beginning their pilgrimage of
alleviation and succor on the battlefields of France.]

And why should it be necessary to urge that while scores of young men
are dashing to death in endeavors to learn to fly, there are women
unmobilized who know how to soar aloft in safety? They have never, it is
true, been submitted to laboratory tests in twirlings and twistings, but
they reach the zenith. Two carried off the records in long distance
flights, but both have been refused admission to the Flying Corps. Will
it need a campaign to secure for our army this efficient service? Must
women pool their brains to have Ruth Law spread her protecting wings
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