GERMAN WOMEN AND THE WAR

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2547, 23 August 1915, Page 3

GERMAN WOMEN AND THE WAR

THE PART THEY PLAY. 'A neutral correspondent in one of the series of articles in "The Times" on conditions in Germany calls attention to tlie. importance of the work done by women in the economic life of Germany. He writes:— "One of the most prominent features of the German industrial world to-day is the increasing number of women who take the places of mon. As it is with agriculture, so it is . with industry: In this way the armies in. the field can he further strengthened without endangering the efficiency of the war industries. More than half a million women are, I was assured, already at work in munition factories. Everywhere in the industrial districts where women are. employed homes for children liave been organised. To tliese . homes . mothers whose husbands ar.e .at the front send their children to be cared" 'for. At .Cologne alone there are already, about 100 such homes. The cost, and that of other dovices for helping the working classes) is considerable. It falls on the local authorities.' At Dusseldorf, for in-stance,-it amounts to .about £550,000. But the spirit of sacrifice is so potent among the working classes, as among the other classes of the community, that few. complaints are heard, and those which are made are directed less against the leaders, of the nation, or against those who .conduct the war, than against the private, and especially the agrarian, interests which are. believed to have forced up the prices of the necessaries of life. "On this subject public meetings are allowed to he hold, and comparatively free discussion is permitted. I attended one sucli meeting at Frankfurt, where the well-known member of'the Reichstag, Dr. 'Quarck, trenchantly criticised the usury in foodstuffs and demanded still stronger measures from the Government to combat it. This meeting aslced for the organisation of a Central Office for the purchase and distribution of food throughout the Empire, the oreation of a potato and meat monopoly, and the distribution of those commodities in accordance "with- the regulations for the distribution of bread. . , The courageous, self-saorific-ing way in which the German women carry their growing, load of sorrow and ..work was what impressed me most deeply in the working-class, world. The ■ German housewife'is able to bring the cost of living down to a minimum, which, I am afraid, the English housewife does not think possible. In this time of crisis the .German woman steps into the man's place to a remarkable extent; and in the German Empire there are 20,000,000 women above the age of 181" '