NATIONAL SERVICE FOR WOMEN.
National service for women as well as for men proved a very substantial portion of Great Britain's strength, but before national service had been generally thought of an organization called the Women's Service Bureau had been formed by a group of influential and intelligent women who were imbued with the idea that only by careful and systematized registration and selection could the matter of feminine war work be successfully arranged.
Lady Frances Balfour was the first president of the Women's Service Bureau, which with the London Society for Suffrage established 62 branches in the city of London and its suburbs.
What the women at the head of this society realized was the necessity for giving the right women the most suitable employment and also to give every applicant for work helpful and practical advice. The need for women's labor in the many trades and professions hitherto closed to them, and for their increased co-operation in those in which they already took part, has been forced home even to unwilling minds.
Here and there on the battlefields of Europe—in Bulgaria, Servia, Roumania, France, Belgium and Russia—have been noted occasionally the presence of a woman warrior, a modern Joan of Arc. It was not expected, however, that in America woman would do more than perform the service work which fell to the lot of the Red Cross nurses and the women practicing conservation and effecting organization in England.
But the women of America were not satisfied with "petticoat preparedness." They rushed to the khaki suits and to the colors with unexpected enthusiasm. One khaki-clad woman walked from San Francisco to New York, making recruiting speeches on the way.
The infantry, the cavalry, the navy, the marines could all point to their girls in khaki.
ALL KINDS OF WOMEN ENLISTED.
As the women enlisted for all kinds of service, so it may be said all kinds of women enlisted—that is, women of all ranks of life—some from society, some from the mills, others from the offices, the shops, the stage, the restaurants and the colleges.
Many years ago the country rang with the name of Tippecanoe, and one of the men who bore arms on the western frontier was William Henry Harrison. The years went by and Benjamin Harrison came to the White House as President.