Quite apart from their ministrations to the men’s material needs, the influence of the Y.M.C.A. ladies in France has been invaluable—cheering, encouraging, and helping the men in countless ways in their brief hours of leisure, and relieving by their presence the endless monotony of their life of discipline.
Among the interesting features of the Y.M.C.A. work are the Scout Huts started by Lady Baden-Powell at two of the bases. The ladies who work in them are mostly Scout-masters and wear the Scout uniform, old Boy Scouts amongst the troops being their most keenly appreciative patrons. Lady Baden-Powell went to France in October, 1915, to organise the work when the huts were built, and she worked for some months in the first two huts. In June, 1916, a Girl Guide Hut was built from funds earned by Girl Guides who, forbidden by their rules from collecting money, each did a day’s work for the fund. Lady Baden-Powell is putting her energies into developing the Girl Guide movement on the same scale as the Boy Scouts. Realising the responsibilities of citizenship which the opportunities of the war have brought to the women of the country, the advantages are manifest of a voluntary training for girls, on the lines which have been so successful with boys, and the Girl Guide movement is a step to this end.
MISS AGNES BORTHWICK
To face page [41]
VII
MISS AGNES BORTHWICK
No woman’s work has more directly furthered the prosecution of the war than that of Miss Agnes Borthwick, who within one year has risen to the unique position—for a woman—of works manager in a great Munition Factory.
When Miss Borthwick sees the trains laden with ammunition steaming out of the factory straight for Southampton, she must feel with justifiable pride that she and her 4000 girls are working for the country as vitally as the soldiers, who will fire the unceasing stream of shells which the girls are sending to them day by day.
Miss Borthwick’s rise to her present position of responsibility has been rapid, even judged by the standards of war promotion. She is of Scottish birth. A woman of high educational attainments, she took an honours M.A. degree in English at Glasgow University in 1912, and subsequently held a research scholarship at Bryn Mawr College, U.S.A. Miss Borthwick spent two years studying in America, and from Bryn Mawr went to Whittier Hall, University of Columbia, New York, and Barnard Hall, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Mass. She also did some research work in Harvard Library.