Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights

by Kelly Miller

If it were ever really necessary for woman to "win a place in the sun" she has done so by her activities with relation to the war. We have regarded woman with a high degree of sentimentality, and to her pleas for recognition in world affairs have shrugged our shoulders and intimated that she was fit to bear children, nurse the sick, do household chores and cook, cook, cook; but physically, mentally and by training she was unfit to perform the greater world duties.

But the world war has proved that all the tasks which men claimed women were unfitted to perform can as well be done by what we have been pleased to term the "weaker sex."

The war has proved a truism that old saying, "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world," and also that the burden of war falls upon women. It is they who give up their sons to their country and send their husbands and boys to the front to serve as fodder for the cannon.

In England the work of women in the war secured for them a degree of recognition in Parliament which all of their agitation and militant tactics failed to produce.

National extremity was woman's opportunity; frank invitation to new lines of work was followed by hearty appreciation on the part of the men; and a proposition to extend suffrage to 6,000,000 English women was based avowedly upon the general gratitude felt for their loyal and effective service in the war. And it is war service, for modern warfare has greatly enlarged the content of that term. In the modern conception those who make munitions or in other ways release others for the front are doing war service as truly as those who bear arms.

Instead of yielding to fame a few isolated Mollie Pitchers, the war brought a largely neglected half of the nation's military strength into practical service. Indeed, though woman dreads war more than man does, if it comes to actual defense of land and home and young, we find, with Kipling, that "the female of the species is more deadly than the male."

THE WORK OF WOMEN.

The work of the women in the munitions factories in England has deservedly attracted large attention, and, doubtless, British historians will for centuries tell how, when England found herself utterly at a loss before her enemies because of a lack of effective ammunition, the women responded "as one man" to meet the need and save the Union Jack from being forced to the shore. It was a repetition, multiplied 10,000 times, of the Presbyterian parson at Springfield, N.J., supplying Washington's army with Watts hymn books when it was retreating to serve as paper wadding for the rifles.

The innovation of the task, the large scale on which it was carried out and the striking success of it make it a major event of the war, even to be compared with the battle of the Marne. And shall not American historians ascribe to the scores of young girls who lost their lives in an explosion at Eddystone, Pa., making munitions, the honor of being the first martyrs of the German-American War?

It was not alone the working girls of England who tired their arms and calloused their hands on the heavy shells. When the work was at its full capacity, a proposition was sent to the women of leisure to undergo three weeks of training in a munitions factory and then take up the work at the week-ends to relieve the regular workers, the women shell machinists, whose strength and skill could best be maintained by saving them from Saturday and Sunday overtime.