THE WOMEN OF FRANCE.

Hokitika Guardian, 8 October 1918, Page 4

THE WOMEN OF FRANCE.

THEIR PART TN THE WAR

Some time after the outbreak of v war Mrs Gertrude Atherton came to t Europe, intending to write of the work which the women of the Allies j had done and were doing. She went j first to France, and was so fascinated ( with what she saw that her visit , lengthened itself; her departure for ( England , was again and again post- j poned, until at last she heard that j Mrs Humphrey Ward, who, by a not very strange coincidence, bad been engaged in a similar task on the other side of the Channel, had in l and a book on the war work of British women. So Mrs Atherton abandoned that side of her subject, and “ The Living Present” deals merely with the record of the women of France. A magnificent record it is. A prominent lawyer in Paris told her that, without the help of the women, France could not have remain, d in the field for six months. Mrs Atherton is quite prepared to believe it. She does not belittle the services of women elsewhere, but is in-lined to think that those of the French woman are unique. After all, no one was very surprised that the English woman rose to the occasion. She was I traditionally able to look alter herself, an independent, out-of-door, athletic person. But the French woman was a different type Her training t Might her little self-reliance, her associations were more closely those of the home, she knew less “freedom ” in a general way, and yet, when ihe call came, she answered it with a spirit and efficiency that amazed even her most ardent admirers. Mrs Atherton reminds us that in France there was little time to make easy the change to the new order of things. In Britain the process was gradual; in France they had a few weeks to reach a point which in Britain was only reached after two years of war. The mobilisation of the ablebodied males of France was complete and instantaneous ; it affected married and single alike. One day there were men ; the next there were no men ! They were all at the depots or on their way to the front. Think what this would mean even in Sydney, far I from the enemy’s guns, and then think what it must have meant, in ■ France, which was actually invaded, , or in Paris, which was hourly more nearly threatened. Yet the French women, met the situation with

wonderful competence, and saved it by taking their men’s places. Mrs Atherton reminds us of features of French social organisation which enable ns to understand how they •ould do so with so little dislocation. The French country woman has never thought, manual labour beneath her dignity: she lias always worked, in the fields beside her husband or father; now, by working still harder, she contrived to keep the farm going. The wile of the shopkeeper, tradesman, and so forth, has always been a partner as well; very often she has provided some of the capital of the business, and very often she is in sole charge of its financial side. So she, too, had no difficulty in carrying on. But there were others less fortunate. Paris is a city of pleasure. The war immediately threw out of work all who catered for pleasure alone. There was a veritable army of penniless actresses and ladies of the chorus, irtists’ models, mannequins, milliners, flower s girls, flower makers, and so forth. The reaction was felt all over France. The output, of luxuries ceased: no longer would the world come to shop at Paris, and there was unemployment at a dozen centres of j the lace, scent, and other industries “de luxe.” Wh?n men were affected they weto, if fit, at once absorbed in J the army, but. there were many who j were not fit, and there were all the j hungry women. This was the first 1 problem which the women of France ! solved, practically without aid from . the Government.

They organised everywhere

oeuvres,” a word which in France has as wide a range of meaning as the American “ stunt.” These “ oeuvres ” discovered in the French woman an executive ability which surprised the world, but neither the ladies themselves nor their menfolk. They fed their “clients ” either gratis or for a price which seems incredible when one considers the sumptuous menu and if one forgets that the French genius for cookery lies not only in the palatable results, but in the economical means. They set them to work sewing, nursing, munition making, at anything, in fact, in which Franco needed workers, and in a few weeks some hundreds of thousands of hungry and despairing women found that so far from being a burden to their country they were helping it to victory by their immediate efforts—and this through the organising ability of women. The most startling thing was the success of the munition workers, who were recruited largely from girls who had been makers of artificial flowers or seamstresses or shop hand?. Their physique was deplorable. They were anaemic, thin-chested, neurotic types, and, while France look them because she needed her daughters no less than her sons to help her, she feared that they would not last six months. Two years later Mrs Atherton saw them still hard at work, sturdy Amazons resembling their former selves in no hing but their invincible coquetrie. Mrs Atherton is convinced that, though the war has hit the manhood of Franco cruelly, it has improved the female type both morally and physically.

Women’s work in France has covered every field. It lias a closer connection with the men at the front than in any other country, and has been of inestimable value to the French .soldier, of whose requirements the authorities take a Spartan view. His issue of clothing is not luxurious; his few sous a day leave little for extras, but. the women supplement everything, oh the lints of our own battalion committees, and endeavour to ensure that no French soldier lacks “comforts.” If a French soldier is wounded or ill he has the best attention; but there were the “ esclopes,” for whom provision could not. be made—the men with bad toothache, a!

heavy cold, a mild attack of influenza, which unfitted them for the trenches, but did not entitle them to enter hospital. They were once sent to camps where they either got better or very much worse. The women took up their case, and have dotted the region behind the lines with hundreds of pleasant “esclope camps,” where the patient gets better and not worse. In this way they' have saved for France many thousands of lighting men. One could quote from Mrs Atherton’s book indefinitely. The women of France have risen to every occasion and have filled every gap. They have seen, made, and taken their opportunity. They have worked, and, above all, they have endured —perhaps in work they have found an anodyne. But for them France must have fallen, and though they have laid the world under a debt which it can never repay, they can see nothing heroic in their con dnet. “ G’est pour France.” they say ; that is the all-sullicient explanation.