WOMEN'S WAR WORK.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 113, 26 November 1915, Page 3 (Supplement)

WOMEN'S WAR WORK.

AT HOME. (From the "London Daily Chronicle''.) By MAY SINCLAIR. Author ot "The Three Sisters," "A Journal of Impressions in Belgium."

There is one reproach that cannot be brought against the women of England. Whoever was or was not prepared for war, they were. You wouitt Have said they had spent years in getting ready, not lor just any wai, Out for precisely this war. They needed no conscription, though many of them would have glored in it as a sfciking recognition of their fitness to servs, they would have offered the paradox of voluntary compulsion. There was nothing that they were not ready to do. It the AVar Office had only seen eye to eye with them we should have had bat talions of women serving in the trendies in Flanders and at any rate attempting to land on the beaches of Gallipou. As th'ngs were, that admirable civil organisation the Women's Emergency Corps (to take one of many energetic bodies) was actually in being within two days of the declaration of war. They could hardly have been quicker than that. But there was nothing miraculous about this abrupt appearance. The elements of the corps, dispersed in endless societies leagues, un'ous ana bureaus, existed already in a state ot solitary prepareduess. It was, 1 believe, the mastery hand of the Actresses Franchiso League that swept them togetiier. The original object of the corps was to give employment to nimdleclass women thrown out of work by the war. With its amazing celerity in two weeks it had received and classified over 10,000 candidates for service, doctors, dispensers, nurses trained and untrained, interpreters, chauffeurs, motorists Also, in place of men, tram and 'bus conductors, lift-women, ticket collectors, taxicab drivers.etc, (Hue by way of a preliminary canter). At first there was little or no demand tor these energetic lemimne substitutes. But the pioneers of the enterprise had faith and more than faith. They had forecast the future with perfect accuracy As the war drafts more and more men into the Armies, the women, utterly prepared, are taking over their jobs. Their appearance, 'n the most unexpected places, makes you realise that we are at war far more than the presence of the troops which you were prepared for and are used for now.

THE ARMY OF WOMEN. After ever so short a time in France or Belgium, where it is all troops everywhere, a few regiments here ana there hardly count. Yet so unobtrusive is the advance of this invading army of women that on my return it struck me only by fortuitous flashes ot things seen: first, the women volunteer, in khaki; then the l.tt-g.rls at Selfridge's; then a girl chauffeur driving one of Wbiteley's vans, taking, very neatly the co,rner oi Londonroad; then on day a small but severely businesslike officer of the Women « Police Patrol crossing the street not far from Scotland Yard; then the delightful little gill-coniiiiissiona're in Bond Street, her tiny figure smothered in g«>ld lace, with the pigtail ot ex treme youth tucked up under her peak ed cap'. She stands at her post incomparably restrained, alert or paces like a little sentry up and 'down before the enormous premises she guards. Already, with the startling adaptability of her sex, the child has wiiiucd the leisurely stride, the superb nonchalance of the male giant she has superseded and released T did not realise the women ticket collectors till last spring, when a young „„et arrived at my house by a curiously 'ircuitous route, engaging insuccession bus H ''.is 31. and bus a 3. When ■isk-ed "Whr take three buses when 'von could have conic by the Metropolitan in one tram?" he replied . daren't. There's a womani ticket collector at vour station, and she ternln■.. me " (Poets are absurdly sensitive.) But that woman (if she ever existed outside a frenzied imag'nat'oui mus: have been taken off since: for the g*l tie manners of these latest re vuite

ought to be a saving in the posters that advertise the Underground. And not only has the Government now accepted much service that it wa» obliged in the beginning to reject, but several important undertakings, 6uch as the care of the refugees, begun again by the Women's Emergency Corps) in the first inrush of the Belgians, and the feeding of children and expectant mothers (a work organise J and carried on for months both by M'x Bylvia Pankhurst and, independently, by Miss Carey), hare been taken over by the Government. But it should no* be forgotten that the women were formost in the field, that women interpreters and women helpers met those first tragic crowds at Charing Cross and Cannon-street Stations. The corps has still an interpreting department and a Belgian clothing store. You will find them, oddly slanted, in a chapel in Carton-street. At the west end, under the gallery, the piles of garments are sorted and distributed; what was once the south aisle is given over to the Colonial Section, where garments sent from Australia and New Zealand arrive in great chests, to be dealt, with by ladies who have come over to help the Mother Country. They will show you "baby's kits from Toowomba, Queensland, and other remote regions. There is something infinitely pathetic about bags full of little frocks and nightgowns and woolly veste thai have travelled so far to the chapd in Cartonstreet. The interpreters sit for ever in a little room up a winding stair; and at the top of the stairs are knittingrooms.

CLEARING HOUSE FOR WOMEN'S LABOUR.

No end to the department* run by the corps, which is itself one of many enterprises. There is (to take instances at random), a Handy-woman Department, a Kitchen Department, a Hospitality Department (that finds homes both for refugees and stranded Englishwomen), a Motor Department, and a Social Relief Department, which is a bureau of employment for voluntary and paid workers. The toy-mark-ers who, under the sign of the Lion's Claw, were once busy "capturing Germany's trade," are now, temporarlry, munition workere. A considerable amount of work—sandbags, covers for respirators, mosquito-veils and so on—u done for the War Office. Even now. allow'ng for all that has been taken over, the bare list of the corps' miscellaneous services would fill one column and overflow into the next. Yon gather from its latest report that it can supply anything, from a trained housekeeper to a fruit-bottler or a-film-cleaner, and if you were to ask in Baker-street for a female mahout to take sole charge of a white elephant from birth you would certainly get her.

For the corps remains a great clear-ing-house for women's labour. Other organisations may have done more in their special departments; none covers si) wide a ground or draws into its net so many and so various activities. Thin it stands for an immense part of the war work that is being done by women all ovor the country and abroad; When you come to the specialised services, apart from the Red Cross Societies and the St. John Ambulance Association, which are too well known to find place here, you have the Women's Volunteer Corps and the Munition-workers. These—to the official mind —would have been unthinkable before the war. But the Government has not even thought twice about employing women on munitions. Every woman who can gauge or fill a shell, or make a fuse, sets a man free for harder.or more highly-skilled munition work or for the Armies. There they are; and there are the volunteer munition-canteens. Not an easy job to be on your feet for hours in all sorts of weather, pushing trolleys from shed to 6hed, or carrying heavy trays, or washing-up against time, and never a breathing space between one movement and the next. Only the night-shifts offered a sol'tarj thrill in the off-chance of a Zeppelin. Then, one day, the toft shirker,, urged to abrupt decision by the increasing attractions of the autumn raids, rushed to headquarters to volunteer, and found that the n'ght canteen*had been closed down. It was what you might have expected. They were too good to last. But to choose the very moment wlien the thrill was beginning! . . . THE VOLUNTEER CORPS. And there are the Volunteer Corps—the first and chief of which is the Women's Volunteer Reserve. Its members are enrolled only if they are passed medically after a mouth's probation. They are trained "on the lines'' of the infantry drill book, and instructed in flag-wagging. This energetic corps turns out ambulance women, first aid and home nurees, hospital orderlies, general orderlies, dispatch riders, everlastingly ready to pick up the wounded, to scrub and clean, to be dispatched anvwhere at a second's notice. It has a motor ambulance, staffed by its own chauffeurs, and placed at the disposal of the London police. The corps is now part of the large body that has sprung Horn it, the Women's Legion, which runs a canteen section, also a cookery section, "to.provide" (I quote from its prospectus) "women cooks to replace Army male cooks where so desired, and for other war service work." The Wohas branches all over the countrv. At Newcastle, that centre ol energy, sixteen of its A olunteer Reservists are attached to the Air Raid station; others are employed as postmen. And Newcastle knows what it is about more than most cities. There is also the Women's A olunteer which has duties not only "semi-military,' but "military." which, in the event of an invasion—but let us hope there won't be an invasion! And there is the Voluntary Aid Detachment, a section of the British Red Cross Society, which runs about a hundred hospitals.