There is a law prohibiting women from going aboard battleships when they are under way, but such an obstacle has not stood in the way of woman's desire to help where she can when her country calls, and so Miss Loretta Walsh became a member of the United States navy—the first woman enlisted in that branch of the service, with the exception of the nurses' corps. Her title was chief yeoman.
Women announced their readiness to assist in another way—in economizing—one organization having adopted the following resolutions:
RESOLUTION ON ECONOMICS.
"Resolved, That all patriotic women be urged to use their influence on fashions in dress to keep them as economical as possible, and to register their disapproval of such styles as the melon and peg-top skirt, or any other styles that imply extravagant changes in the wardrobe, to the end that the time and money thus saved from clothes may be devoted to the needs of the nation."
How often have we heard: "When war comes, when our homes are threatened, when peril stalks abroad in the land, who shoulders the musket and goes out to fight? The man! The man!"
But woman, knowing better than man the impulses of her own heart, only awaited the opportunity to show what she could do, though, much more than man, she loves peace, detests strife. But she did not await an actual call to arms to show the patriotic spirit with which her soul was fired. Whatever her Government was willing she should do, to that was she prepared to give her best efforts.
Lady Frances Balfour, president of the London Society of National Union of Women Suffragists and president of the Travelers' Aid Society, worked as hard to win the war as any Tommy in the trenches.
A daughter of the eighth Duke of Argyll and the widow of a soldier, she played an important part in Scotch and English public life for many years, and has done much to advance the cause of British women.
An authentic view of the situation as it developed with reference to the reception of women into the everyday work and what American women might do is contained in the following interview with Lady Balfour: