Another aspect that involved women during the Great War concerned welfare attitudes, both from a Catholic as well as from a lay perspective, which they put into practice. Many women organized centres for meetings for the promotion of initiatives to support the war such as the collection of money or goods that were meant for the families of soldiers who were deployed on the front or else organized visits to soldiers who were on leave or away from the battlefields.
Women from the middle class and from aristocratic families with good financial means were particularly involved in these initiatives. They maintained their roles on lines that were more traditional and, according to the mentality of those times, dignified. By applying their skills and their knowledge of home economics, they would gather in groups and, for example, collect furs and used clothes in order to create other clothes that could be sent to the front. They were also able to make garments that could serve against pests and prevented the problem of head lice inside trenches or else they organized the collection of kernels of peaches and apricots which were processed properly and transformed into soap.
At the same time that these "maternal" initiatives were under way, similar initiatives in the medical field too were launched with the mobilization of volunteer women and girls of the Red Cross (and other relief organizations). Hospitals that were located in areas that were away from the frontline and other similar institutions had lots of nurses who were eager to provide help and relief to wounded soldiers and to those who came back from terrible periods spent in the trenches. It is estimated that in 1917 there were about 10,000 Red Cross volunteers and that to this number could be added a similar amount of volunteers who were members of other associations.
Their appearance was undoubtedly more prominent when compared to that of other Italian women during the First World War. Being in attendance in areas away from the battlefields in environments that were characterized by a very strong male presence and with the aim of nursing these men by means of physical contact, these nurses became a symbol of womanhood that was blended with eroticism. This image was also used in propaganda: "There are many [postcards] where these nurses, elegantly clothed in their uniforms and not without an element of flirting, peep in the direction of stalwart soldiers, embrace them and assume openly seductive attitudes." (Antonio Gibelli, La Grande Guerra degli Italiani, BUR, Milan, 2009, page 203). On the other hand the relationship between love and war also appears in many contemporary songs that were sung by soldiers or in novels such as the very famous "Farewell to Arms" by Hemingway.
