The success of the conservation movement in the United States depends in the end on the understanding the women have of it. No forward step in this whole campaign has been more deeply appreciated or more welcomed than that which the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution and other organizations of women have taken in appointing conservation committees.

Patriotism is the key to the success of any nation, and patriotism first strikes its roots in the mind of the child. Patriotism which does not begin in early years may, though it does not always, fail under the severest trials. I say "not always," for many men and women have proved their patriotic devotion to this country although they were born elsewhere. Yet, as a rule, it must begin with the children. And almost without exception it is the mother who plants patriotism in the mind of the child. It is her duty. The growth of patriotism is first of all in the hands of the women of any nation. In the last analysis it is the mothers of a nation who direct that nation's destiny.

The fundamental task of patriotism is to see to it that the Nation exists and endures in honor, security, and well-being. Fortunately there is no question as to our existing in honor, and little if any as to our continuing to exist in security.

The great fundamental problem which confronts us all now is this: Shall we continue, as a Nation, to exist in well-being? That is the conservation problem.

If we are to have prosperity in this country, it will be because we have an abundance of natural resources available for the citizen. In other words, as the minds of the children are guided toward the idea of foresight, just to that extent, and probably but little more, will the generations that are coming hereafter be able to carry through the great task of making this Nation what its manifest destiny demands that it shall be.

Women should recognize, if this task is to be carried out, one great truth above all others. That this Nation exists for its people, we all admit; but that the natural resources of the Nation exist not for any small group, not for any individual, but for all the people—in other words, that the natural resources of the Nation belong to all the people—that is a truth the whole meaning of which is just beginning to dawn on us. There is no form of monopoly which exists or ever has existed on any large scale which was not based more or less directly upon the control of natural resources. There is no form of monopoly that has ever existed or can exist which can do harm if the people understand that the natural resources belong to the people of the Nation, and exercise that understanding, as they have the power to do.

It seems to me that of all the movements which have been inaugurated to give power to the conservation idea, the foresight idea, there is none more helpful than that the women of the United States are taking hold of the problem. We must make all the people see that now and in the future the resources are to be developed and employed, yet at the same time guarded and protected against waste—not for small groups of men who will control them for their own purposes, but for all the people through all time.

The question of the conservation of our natural resources is not a simple question, but it requires, and will increasingly require, thinking out along lines directed to the fundamental economic basis upon which this Nation exists. I think it can not be disputed that the natural resources exist for and belong to the people; and I believe that the part of the work which falls to the women (and it is no small part) is to see to it that the children, who will be the men and women of the future, have their share of these resources uncontrolled by monopoly and unspoiled by waste.

What specific things can the women of the Nation do for conservation? The Daughters of the American Revolution have begun admirably in the appointment of a Conservation Committee, and other organizations of women are following their example. Few people realize what women have already done for conservation, and what they may do. Some of the earliest effective forest work that was done in the United States, work which laid the lines that have been followed since, was that of the Pennsylvania Forestry Association, begun and carried through first of all by ladies in Philadelphia. One of the bravest, most intelligent and most effective fights for forestry that I have known of was that of the women of Minnesota for the Minnesota National Forest. It was a superb success, and we have that forest to-day. I have known of no case of persistent agitation under discouragement finer in a good many ways than the fight that the women of California have made to save the great grove of Calaveras big trees. As a result the Government has taken possession of that forest and will preserve it for all future generations.

Time and again, then, the women have made it perfectly clear what they can do in this work. Obviously the first point of attack is the stopping of waste. Women alone can bring to the school children the idea of the wickedness of national waste and the value of public saving. The issue is a moral one; and women are the first teachers of right and wrong. It is a question of seeing what loyalty to the public welfare demands of us, and then of caring enough for the public welfare not to set personal advantage first. It is a question of inspiring our future citizens while they are boys and girls with the spirit of true patriotism as against the spirit of rank selfishness, the anti-social spirit of the man who declines to take into account any other interest than his own; whose one aim and ideal is personal success. Women both in public and at home, by letting the men know what they think, and by putting it before the children, can make familiar the idea of conservation, and support it with a convincingness that nobody else can approach.

However important it may be for the lumberman, the miner, the wagon-maker, the railroad man, the house-builder,—for every industry,—that conservation should obtain, when all is said and done, conservation goes back in its directest application to one body in this country, and that is to the children. There is in this country no other movement except possibly the education movement—and that after all is in a sense only another aspect of the conservation question, the seeking to make the most of what we have—so directly aimed to help the children, so conditioned upon the needs of the children, so belonging to the children, as the conservation movement; and it is for that reason more than any other that it has the support of the women of the Nation.