THE WAR GARDEN VICTORIOUS 
75 
I am sure, enter into the purpose with high spirits, 
because I am sure they would all like to feel that they 
are in fact fighting in France by joining the home garden 
army. They know that America has undertaken to 
send meat and wheat and flour and other foods for the 
support of the soldiers who are doing the fighting for 
the men and women who are making the munitions, 
and for the boys and girls of Western Europe, and that 
we must also feed ourselves while we are carrying on 
this war. The movement to establish gardens, there- 
fore, and to have the children work in them is just as 
real and patriotic an effort as the building of ships or 
the firing of cannon. I hope that this spring every 
school will have a regiment in the Volunteer War 
Garden Army. 
Cordially and sincerely yours, 
Woodrow Wilson. 
Hon. Franklin K. Lane, 
Secretary of the Interior. 
From the outset the United States School Garden 
Army allied itself with the National War Garden Com- 
mission for the conduct of the work for which it had 
been organized. This affiliation covered not only food 
production through gardening but also the work of food 
conservation through home canning and drying. 
One of the first requisites of the newly formed army 
was that its membership should be reached with tech- 
nical instructions so compiled as to be authoritative and 
so presented as to be easily understood. To accomplish 
this the United States School Garden Army utilized the 
publications of the National War Garden Commission. 
