with their men in war." We could see that the throb of the old heroic blood was in our women still when, a year and a half ago, thirty thousand of them walked in procession through London, to ask to be allowed to do war-work—women of every class, the rich and the poor, the educated and the uneducated, the gently-born and the heavily-burdened, the woman with the delicate, spiritual face, and the woman with the face hardened by toil. They are in the factories now, five hundred thousand of them all over the country, a vast army of female soldiers, who stand for British womanhood.
But what took them there? If they had gone into the Red Cross, or into the commissariat or clothing departments (woman's ancient domain) they would have seemed to take life's straightest road. But there is a natural antagonism between woman and war, and it is difficult to think of her as a maker of weapons of death. Battle is in the blood of man, and perhaps it is natural that he should
