Radio Mirror: The Magazine of Radio Romances (Jan-June 1943)

V # %i\n iii» To the women of America: This time it's different! We're in it too! We must keep our lives in order, so that our men can come marching home to a happy, secure future s THIS time it's different. Before, when men went off to war there was little the women they left behind them could do but keep the home fires burning, roll bandages at the Red Cross and wait. Wait until their hearts almost cracked with the weight of their fears and their loneliness. Wait until their patience and spirit grew weary and then wait some more. Today we're in it too. The days aren't long enough for all we have to crowd into them. There's no night we don't go to our bed tired, momentarily, to a point of exhaustion. But, comparatively speaking, this time it's easy. Because, since we don't have time to think, our imagination cannot needlessly torture 'us. Because we know that every day we live and work at our appointed tasks — whatever they may be — we contribute some small portion to the victory to which our hearts, bodies, and minds are dedicated. Those of us who live in the country have gardens. When we have picked the tomatoes and the beans and all the other vegetables from our vines and when we have pulled the turnips and the potatoes and the beets out of the earth we must get out our big preserving kettles. The conservation of food is, as always, vital to the war effort. Everything we grow and preserve means that much more food and, by the same token, that much more energy, for our armed forces who still travel on their stomachs. It also means that much more food and energy for those, like ourselves, who fight behind the lines. Many of us who live near a war industry are essential to the assembly lines where rivets and welding machines and bolts and a hundred other materials and labors, miraculously, merge into ships and planes, jeeps and tanks, anti-aircraft 48 guns and rifles, and the hundred other things which in the brave, skilled hands of our men will merge, just as miraculously, into victory and peace. Our hands must make bandages too. And we must bake our share of cookies and crullers for those big jars in the USO clubrooms which empty so quickly. We must dance with the boys stationed in our city or our town, because dancing to a good hot band is one of the things they love most. We must be up early with hot coffee and cigarettes any time the troops come through. We must donate blood when the Red Cross issues a call because the plasma they make from blood has the power to save lives and may, for all we know, save the life we love most of all. We must get letters off to him, wherever he is, regularly. They must be cheerful letters too, filled with all the dear, intimate things he wants to know when he's far away and homesick, even if he doesn't admit this to himself. We must, in other words, contribute to morale. For out of morale, too, victories are won. The more fortunate among us have children. Their, half-formed, strange fears of "air-raids" and "bad men" and defeat and slavery must be allayed tactfully, lightly, constantly. The spirit of home in which their minds are growing and forming must be a good spirit. The food which builds their bodies must be good food to keep them straight and strong. They must have a little more affection from us to make up for the affection of those who are absent. Pediatricians insist, you know, that affection is as important to a child's well-being as sleep and food. We have our homes. With incomes curtailed in some cases and war bonds or stamps pinching the budget in all cases it takes extra thought and time to manage bright curtains, a lamp shade for a bedroom, a slip cover for the sofa, replacements for the dishes that crack and chip. There's never any telling when he'll come home on furlough. He must not go off again with any less bright an image of that little bit of American life which belongs to him. We have ourselves. We must keep informed so our minds won't grow lazy and untutored and dull. We must arrange a few minutes every night with our mirror and tissues and cold cream jars and hair-brush. We must squeeze time out in the morning for tubs and make-up kits. We must have shampoos to keep our hair healthy and bright. We must have manicures. It wouldn't be fair to have him come home and find a dreary woman had replaced the fair image he had, so long and longingly, carried in his heart. There isn't time for all we have to do. But somehow we make time. And the days flow behind us, one after another. And with every effort we make, with every job we finish we come a little nearer to the happy day when they'll all come marching home and there no longer will be any dimout of lights at night and all over the world the torch of freedom once more will burn brightly. This time it's different. This time we're in it too. Thank God! Kate Smith and Ted Collins broadcast America's favorite daytime program from the living room of her own home. "Kate Smith Speaks" is heard Monday through Friday on . CBS at noon. Now that you've read Kate's inspiring message, turn the page for her wartime menu hints. RADIO MIRROR