What the War Means to Women

By Mrs. A. J. Wilder.

"This is a woman's war and the women will see to it that before the war is ended the world shall be made safe for women." This sentiment was expressed by a woman in my hearing soon after the declaration of war by the United States.

Every war is more or less a woman's war, God knows, but is this in an especial way a woman's war? Never before in the history of the world has war been deliberately made upon the womanhood of the world and motherhood, woman's crown and glory, been made her scourge and shame. The tortures by savages, tales of which used to make our blood run cold did not equal in horror and cruelty what has been inflicted upon educated, refined women and ignorant peasant women alike.

Stripped naked and driven along the roads out of their own country a sport for drunken soldiers. Thrown by hundreds into the rivers when the crowds of soldiers had tired of them—this was a part of the war in Armenia.

Death by thousands, after nameless horrors and suffering, along the roads of Poland.

Driven over the snow covered mountains of Servia; dying of hunger and exhaustion and wounds, a fate preferred to falling into the hands of the invaders—this was the fate of the women of Servia.

Tortured and defiled, mutilated and murdered in Belgium and northern France. The mind revolts and the soul sickens at even trying to contemplate the things that women have been made to suffer by Germany's invading armies.

There has been a planned, deliberate attempt, by the enemy, to destroy the other nations of the world. To destroy a nation, its women and children must be exterminated and so a part of this incredible plot has been to so mutilate and destroy the women of those nations that they will bear no more children to perpetuate their race.

All over the world women are bravely taking their part in the conflict and doing what they can to defend those things they hold most sacred, their homes, their children and their honor. In all the allied countries women are filling places of responsibility and danger, doing hard, unpleasant work to help in the struggle to "make the world safe for women."

Women are showing their fearlessness on all the battle fronts. In Russia when the soldiers refused to fight, the women formed the famous "Battalion of Death" and met the enemy on the first line. They held their section of the line, too, when on every side the soldiers retreated in disorder and tho every women in the battalion was killed or wounded. Later, with their ranks refilled, this battalion of women took part in the fighting at Petrograd, defending their position dauntlessly, seemingly without fear of death.

The women in the Red Cross units on the western front hesitate at nothing they find to do to help the allied cause. They were the last to leave the abandoned towns before the Germans entered and they helped the refuges to escape, picked up and removed scores of wounded, driving their own trucks and motor cars, established temporary kitchens near the front to feed the soldiers who had not eaten for hours and, when the emergency arose, took charge of the military traffic and directed the columns of guns, cavalry, supply wagons and troops and prevented a traffic jam.

The women of the American Red Cross are winning honor in the western battle front. They act as cooks or chauffeurs, traffic policemen, stretcher bearers or grave diggers as the occasion arises.

Women in sheltered America have perhaps been slow to realize what the war means to them but they are beginning to understand. Among them, as among the men, are some pessimists and whiners, also some cowards and slackers, but they are few.

When the British retreated on the west, the first of April, a man remarked, "They're licking the stuffing out of us, licking us every day," and a woman answered, "What does one retreat amount to? A man isn't whipped in a fight even if he is knocked down, if he just gets up and comes again."

I like the spirit of the man whom I heard say, "We can't be whipped! We won't be whipped! We'll fight for 60 years if we must, but we'll never give up!"

A widow whose son volunteered and is now in France, said she was so proud of him that she had no time to be sorry; that she was glad he had gone and could not understand how any young man could stay at home.

Another woman, speaking of her son who had volunteered, said she was proud of him and that he would have been ashamed to look his sister in the face if he had not gone to help protect her from the fate of the girls of Belgium and France.

The congregation at the church was remarkable on Easter Sunday for the absence of new hats and the large number of Liberty Bond pins and Red Cross buttons. One woman who has always taken great pride in her apparel said to me: "I can't get a new hat this summer. I'm paying for my Liberty Bond and helping with the Red Cross and someway new hats don't seem to matter."

The little town of Mansfield and immediate vicinity, oversubscribed its quota in the Third Liberty Loan.

Mrs. A. J. Wilder. "What the War Means to Women." Missouri Ruralist,  (May 5, 1918): pages 10-11.

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