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WOMEN IN WAS
Lieutenant-Commander J.M. Ken- <*>
worthy's cabled statement that the
next world war will see women not
only in the military camps and hospi-
tals, but in the trenches, and sharing
(as In some armies they did in the last
war) the perils of the front and of the
air, affords matter for suggestive
study. Not only has the sphere of
woman taken a wider range, but that
of war has done so, too, and, as Lieu
tenant-Commander Kenworthy points
out, since belligerency recognises little
if any distinction between the fighting
elements and the civil population,
women might as well join the com
batants as incur the almost equal risk
of being bombed or gassed at home.
But what does still more to influence
his belief in the future active partici
pation of women in all the horrors and
rigors of warfare is the masculinity
they have developed in so many other
directions. They are doctors, lawyers,
engineers, and agriculturists, and in
fact they have entered so many call
ings that it really seems they have only
to don the khaki to have done every
thing. Courage, hardihood, presence
of mind, coolness, and power of endur
ance are virtues no longer monopolised
by the sterner sex. As shown by the
performance of Miss Amy Johnson,
who is only one of quite a small army
of feminine aviators, these virtues are
capable of indefinite development in
the other sex too.
So often has history repeated itself
that the fulfilment of lieutenant-Com
mander Kenworthy's prediction would
be little matter for astonishment. Dur
ing the Great War woman porters,
women ticket collectors, and women
munition workers were so common in
the belligerent countries as to attract
no attention. Examples of women in
the role of combatants have been
numerous, ever since the Asiatic queen
Hippolyte, or, as she is otherwise
known, Antiope. led her legions in
battle, only in the end to perish
by the hand of Hercules.
The title Amazon, signifying "breast
less," is, according to one account, de
rived from the practice of severing the
right breast in order that it might not
impede the bending of the bow. His
torians may differ as to the reliance to
be placed on the stories of feminine
warriors, but as to their widespread
currency there is no doubt, and the
River Amazon was so named in the
Middle Ages from a belief that its
banks fostered a race of the kind. As
everyone knows, Dahomey, in Western
Africa, is famous for the possession of
an army of Amazonian stalwarts, serv
ing as a bodyguard of the King. In
their resistance to the Allies the Bol
shevists did not the aid of
feminine followers of the stern goddess
Bellona. The Great War touched the
gentler sex in all countries very closely.
In the medical and auxiliary services
they went abroad and shared the hard
ships and perils of the other sex. No
theatre of war was so remote that they
did not bear their share of the heat
and burden of the day. and it may eeem
to some that **v? gulf separating their
occupations at that period, from those
which Commander Kenworthy's pre
diction assigns them, would not take
much to bridge. Yet, brilliantly as they
have acquitted themselves in other
fields requiring qualities not unlike
those needed on the battlefield, it may
be hoped that the occasion will not
arise for testing their fighting aptitudes.
Success in this direction might mean
the death of those angelic capacities so
justly and eloquently extolled in lines
too hackneyed to need quoting.
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