VERY now and then a sex war is predicted, and sometimes started, usually by woman, though some predicted that when the present European war is over and the men come home to their civilian tasks, now being carried on by women, man is going to take the initiative, in the sex conflict. We doubt it. Without deliberate design to prove this point,—that a complete collaboration of the sexes has always made the wheels of the universe revolve, many of the illustrations studied showed woman with man as decoration, in Ancient Egypt, Greece, and during later periods.
The Legend of Life tells us that man can not live alone, hence woman; and the Pageant of Life shows that she has played opposite with consistency and success throughout the ages.
The Sunday issue of the Philadelphia Public Ledger for March 25, 1917, has a headline, "Trousers vs. Skirts," and, continues Margaret Davies, the author of the article:
"This war will change all things for European women. Military service, of a sort, has come for them in both France and England, where they are replacing men employed in clerical and other non-combatant departments, including motor driving. The moment this was decided upon in England, it was found that 30,000 men would be released for actual fighting, with prospects of the release of more than 200,000 more. What the French demand will be is not known as I write, but it will equal that of England.
"How will these women dress? Will they be given military uniforms short of skirt or even skirtless? Of course they won't; but the world on this side of the ocean would not gasp should this be done. War industry already has worked a revolution.
"Study the pictures which accompany this article. They are a new kind of women's 'fashion pictures'; they are photographs of women dressed as European circumstances now compel them to dress. Note the trousers, like a Turkish woman's, of the French girl munitions workers. Thousands of girls here in France are working in such trousers. Note the smart liveries of the girls who have taken the places of male carriage starters, mechanics and elevator operators, at a great London shop. They are very natty, aren't they? Almost like costumes from a comic opera. Well, they are not operatic costumes. They are every-day working liveries. Girls wear them in the most mixed London crowds—wear them because the man-shortage makes it necessary for these girls to do work which skirts do not fit. All French trams and buses have 'conductresses.'
"The coming of women cabmen in London is inevitable—indeed, it already has begun. In Paris they have been established sparsely for some time and have done well, but they have not been used on taxis, only on the horse cabs.
"I have spent most of my time in Paris for some months now, and have ridden behind women drivers frequently. They drive carefully and well and are much kinder to their horses than the old, red-faced, brutal French cochérs are. I like them. They have a wonderful command of language, not always entirely or even partially polite, but they are accommodating and less greedy for tips than male drivers.
"At Selfridge's great store—the largest and most progressive in London, operated on Chicago lines—skirtless maidens are not rare enough to attract undue attention. The first to be seen there, indeed, is not in the store at all, but on the sidewalk, outside of it, engaged in the gentle art of directing customers to and from their cars and cabs and incidentally keeping the chauffeurs in order.
"An extremely pretty girl she is, too, with her frock-coat coming to her knees, her top-boots coming to the coat, and now and then, when the wind blows, a glimpse of loose knickers. She tells me that she's never had a man stare at her since she appeared in the new livery, although women have been curious about it and even critical of it. Women have done all the staring to which she has been subjected.