endeavor that will best serve the common good. ... The whole
Nation must be a team, in which each man must play the part for
which he is best fitted. [Footnote: Conscription Proclamation, May
18, 1917.]

THE NATION AS A TEAM

We had some suggestion on page 72 of how such national team work
became a fact. "Do your bit!" was the watch-word. It was splendid
to see how personal interests gave way before the desire to serve
the nation. It is a thrilling story how the racial elements in our
population forgot their differences of race and language and
remembered only that they were American; how employers and
employees laid aside their differences; how farmers and
businessmen, manufacturers and mechanics, miners and woodsmen,
inventors and teachers, women in the home and children in the
schools, doctors and nurses, and every other class and group
subordinated their personal interests to the one national purpose
of winning the war in order that "the world might become a decent
place in which to live."

As soon as the United States entered the war, Washington, the
nation's capital, became filled with people from all parts of the
country who wanted to help in some way. Some were called there by
the government; others came to volunteer their services and to
offer ideas that they thought useful. Many came as representatives
of organizations--business and industrial organizations,
scientific associations, civic societies. New committees and
associations were formed, until the number of voluntary citizen
organizations eager to do "war work" became almost too numerous to