THE WOMEN OF FRANCE

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3114, 19 June 1917, Page 2

THE WOMEN OF FRANCE

A TOUCHING AODHESS. In an eloquent and touching address given by Mdlle. Soubeiran on Franco before the members of tho Queen Victoria Club and the Women's Kel'orin ]>i"uo .(Sydney) mention was made that tho situation in connection with the war had recently undergone a great change. Tho .... women of Franco, until tho Russian a flairs .so changed tho prospect, hold out so stoically that it seemed as if they worn under a. wonderful spell; sacrifices that it deemed humanly impossible lo bear were accepted as if they felt no pain. They wore buoyed by this spirit because they felt that all they endured would tho quicker help tlm stru""l« lo end in viclory. They thought that" their svflcriiigs would secure a peaceful and free futui* for their children. Ultimate viclory was I lie goal which kept them bravely working and struggling without complaint. Hut this defection of Russia had crushed the band of brave women who had worked and suffered so wonderfully. "My voico will not allow me to tell you of the sufferings .-\nd eudiimnr-e of tho French refugees, and you could not bear to listen to them," 'continued Millie. "Their sufferings are beyond anything tho human mind can conceive. Of the least horrifying I will tell yon; il is nothing for k searchers to find a helpless babe lying in a, dead mother's arms by the roadside, where she has fallen, Hying in terror from the German soldiers. You have all read recently of tTio strike of .1000 women in France. Maybe many of you have been shocked, but it was all duo to the defection of Russia. Cannot you rcaliso the feeling of these poor women who saw all their hopes thru'fc away into Ilio dim future. A year of war. It means years and years, even centuries counted by sufferings, and those poor women livvn stood three years of it. A siring that has l.een pulled 'too tightly iniisf- break. The strike was duo to tho bitterness of tho blow, and I hope, indeed T am pure, that I hose .poor suffering snuls will pull themselves together again. The best way to help them is for those who have not suffered to send them practical sympathy to show that the women of oilier lands flro not insensible of their sufferings. Tn, helping France's war victims we aro helping to win the war. remarked Jldlle. Soubeiran. If we aro not prepared to do.it out of genernsih- of henrr, wo must do it from a selfish standpoint, because by lielning to keep up the courage of bleeding Franco we are helping lo win tho war.