Food and freedom

happy and grave — happy, because of the Hmitless power for good that comes of doing day by day what must be done, and of seeing, even in the drudgery of it, "a Hght that never was on sea nor land"; grave, lest in times of human weak- ness you may turn from the light and may see only a sad and dull routine in a world of dark- ness and sorrow. In these hours which may be only the reactionary consequence of the best work you have ever done — the nervous depres- sion that follows nervous exaltation — learn to say with the old philosopher, "This, too, shall pass," and learn to look, even at your own weari- ness, with the eyes of a poet. For I still believe that, though few women have been great poets, it is part of a woman's mission to put poetry into life . . . not to scorn the cabbage, but to in- vest it with a rose motive, to see the light that kindles the commonplace into everlasting truth.^ REFERENCES AND CREDIT NOTE: The food facts as outlined in Chapters I and II have been arranged from the following authoritative sources; full credit is given. For further and more detailed knowledge, these publications are earnestly recom- mended : The Food Problem, Kellogg and Taylor, Macmillan Company, New York, N. Y. "Ten Lessons in Food Conservation," United States Food Administration, Special Bulletin. Bulletin No. 6, United States Food Administration. 1 Le Baron Russell Briggs, Harvard Uni\ ersity. WHAT YOU CAN DO 19 ''What Food Control Means," United States Food Administration, Special Paper. "The World on Rations," United States Food Ad- ministration, Special Paper. Annual Report, Secretary Houston, United States Department of Agriculture, December, 1916. "The Food Situation," Secretary Houston, United States Department of Agriculture, March, 191 7. "Food Armies of Liberty," Herbert Hoover, National Geographic Magazine, September, 19 17. Ill WHAT WE SHOULD KNOW The new democracy holds the near solution of domestic drudgery. ... To have only beautiful things and artistic devices in our homes in order to produce a simplicity de luxe would be to emancipate many women and cheer many men. The new home will be a well-organized and beautiful expression of a new life in which men and women together will gradually make disorder, dirt, and extravagance conspicuous by their absence. — Mrs. Have- lock Ellis, in The Craftsman Magazine, July, 1914. F we, the housekeepers of America, are effectively to answer this call to serve the world, if we are to satisfy our ob- ligation in the present emergency, if we are to build better for the future than we have built in the past, there are certain fundamental facts in connection with home-making with which we should be familiar. We should, moreover, be able to trace these facts in their logical sig- nificance, and appreciate them in their relative importance. These facts clearly grasped, once WHAT WE SHOULD KNOW 21 sensed in some orderly fashion, should form a helpful background on which to shape our service. When ordered, they re^d somewhat as follows: The home is the birthplace of every human im- pulse.^ It represents the unit of the state, and has very fittingly been called the index of civil- ization. What happens in the home shapes the world beyond. Home-making deals essentially with the material protection and spiritual advancement of the family or those who make up the home.