BRITISH WOMEN IN WAR TIME.

Evening Star, Issue 23682, 16 September 1940, Page 4

BRITISH WOMEN IN WAR TIME.

When the history of the war comes to be written the wonderful and invaluable work the women of Britain are doing will be made clear. Naturally, it is not the most spectacular kind, as they do not take part in the actual fighting, but they are revealing qualities of courage and endurance, facing death and sorrow hourly, in a way that has mAdo a deep impression on neutral observers. An example of their watchfulness is given to-day in the case of a Royal Air Force pilot who had to “ bale ” out over England owing to a mishap to his plane. Thinking that he was an enemy airman, he was quickly surrounded by girls working in a potato field, and had he been a German he would have had no chance of escape. In a sense all wars in the past have been women’s wars, because their menfolk have been involved. Women are oven more directly concerned in the present conflict, for war is being waged by a merciless enemy on. civilian populations without regard to the lives of helpless women and children. Further, there is the fundamental factor in the situation that the totalitarian States

are definitely opposed to the emancipation of women and to their public social mission. The Women’s War Emergency Council in Great Britain has shown much activity since tho war started, and has used its influence suct'cssfully on Government departments on questions such as food prices, war allowances for the wives and families of men in the fighting services, rent allowances, improvements in the payments to mothers and other dependents of the unmarried soldiers, and it obtained a substantial increase in the maximum allowed for special grants to meet hardship due to pre-war commitments for rent, rates, house and furniture purchase, education, and so forth. In actual war work, in addition to nursing, tho Army, Navy, and Air Force all have their women’s auxiliary services, whose members seiye as cooks, orderlies, clerks, and drivers. The women’s auxiliary territorial services are a body 25,000 strong, which is to be raised in numbers to 40,000. In air precautions women take a prominent part as wardens. When to these things is added the work that is being done in munition and allied factories, on the land, and in scores of other essential industries, some idea of the extent of tho war work undertaken by the women of tho Mother Country can be gained. In describing women’s role in Britain to-day Sylvia Pankliurst, in an article in the ‘ Christian Science Monitor,’ says British women have met tho great emergency very calmly, very capably. At the same time, they abate not a jot of the ground they have gained for women and their mission. Their hatred of war is intense as ever. Perhaps many leading feminists will now realise—what they would not admit before—that the best way to prevent war is to make adequate preparations for such a contingency.