From the Millennial Star, April 1944 —

Salute to Gallantry

By Edith Russell

Women, in spite of doing men’s jobs with amazing efficiency, are still managing to retain that degree of femininity necessary to keep our war-blurred visions in correct perspective.

At a conference of L.D.S. women held recently in London, every woman, almost without exception, was smartly and tastefully dressed. Perhaps no one wore new clothes, but there was a noticeable fastidiousness about the touches of immaculate white that the Spring sunshine had called forth, and an intelligent use of accessories, which set at nought the restrictions and disadvantages of coupons and war conditions generally.

It is, of course, an acknowledged fact that L.D.S. women are clever with their fingers.” Like their pioneer mothers, they can make their own clothes – and their children’s, and that saves coupons. Their good taste and natural restraint in selecting clothes is an expression of the education they have received and are receiving in the various Church auxiliaries. Relief Society, M.I. A., etc.. and these attributes are the major contributions to any woman’s good appearance.

I dare say those women who crossed the plains a century ago became adept in the art of “making and mending.” They were at war too, fighting very much for the same things we are fighting for now, religious freedom, the right to live according to the dictates of conscience. Something of their gallantry is being enacted now. It was manifested in that Conference, in an obvious determination on the part of those women who make-do and mend, and who are carrying heavy domestic burdens so that the depleted Priesthood might be free to carry on the work of the branches, to present a charming as well as a brave face to a world at war.

-oOo-

From the Millennial Star, May 1944 —

Mothers’ Day

By Edith Russell

A very simple word. Strange that it should embody so much. I have watched the faces of men, thousands of miles from home, wearing the uniform of their country, and I have seen the expression in their eyes as they spoke of home, and heard the involuntary change in their tone as they mentioned their mother – a sort of half-shy tenderness, perhaps because they had grown to be men since they last saw her, and from the new heights of manhood they saw her qualities with clearer eyes. “It’s Mothers’ Day soon, and I simply gotta get flowers home to mom,” one husky fellow said. He was very earnest. Six feet tall, khaki clad, with a burgundy and blue patch on his sleeve which informed the world he was “Airborne.” His mother was a very small person apparently incapable of producing such a powerful specimen of manhood as he was. He carried her photograph in his tunic pocket, very soiled and much handled. The wind held it close to his body each time he dropped from a plane far above the earth. And on Mothers’ Day he wanted to pay his tribute to her, to show her he had not forgotten. . . .

These men do not forget. To watch them as they read their letters from home, is to realise that they love to hear about simple, homely things that only mothers know how to write about. It isn’t what they write – Father’s objection to wearing utility socks – young Amy s school exams, – but an indescribable aura pervades all mother’s letters to their sons and daughters, who for some reason or other have gone away from home. It is filled with a strange yearning and a typical throat-catching tendency to scold, mixed with a loyeable determination not to interfere.

And on Mothers’ Day hundreds of men on foreign service will tuck a flower in their caps or in their tunics, because they find it not inappropriate to their manhood to honour all mothers all over the world.

The observance of Mothers’ Day is a safeguard to mankind. Inasmuch as these men remember with gratitude and reverence all the virtue, beauty and loveliness embodied in motherhood; ail the sacrifice, unselfishness and devotion expressed in the word “mother”, they will have’ a measure of protection from the temptations and ills of the world. No man will keep the day without remembering how mother could heal most things; how she liked clean, wholesome things about her, how precious to her was the priesthood invested in her sons. And while they remember. Zion’s manhood is safe.