And woman has proved her ingenuity. In the damp trenches of the battlefields abroad the men need protection from the dampness and cold, which ordinary clothing will not provide. It was found that the leather-lined huntsmen's coats, and the sort of garments worn by the chauffeur, the aviator and the mountaineer served the men in the trenches well, and particularly along the Russian frontier and in the cold mountainous regions.
But the price of leather soared, with the demand for millions of pairs of shoes, saddles, harness, headgear, and whatnot, and leather-lined coats were at a premium. The women were not to be denied, and through the Suffrage organizations which turned in to prepare America for the struggle and to render assistance to the Allies, the unique plan was adopted of making linings for the airmen and soldier's coats of old kid gloves.
One group of women in a single section of Philadelphia gathered a thousand pairs of old gloves in a canvass. The seams were ripped and the gloves cut down one side and laid open. The fingers of one glove so treated were dovetailed between the fingers of another glove so cut, and stitched together. Thus one glove was sewed to another until a section of leather was formed sufficient to make a lining for a coat. And many such were devised and incorporated in the garments sent to the front by the various agencies dominated by the women of the land.
WOMEN AS POLICEMEN.
While women to a limited degree were rendering service as "policemen" in certain sections of the United States and on Continental Europe the war was responsible for the development of an organized force in London, which will probably remain a permanent organization to the end of time. Miss Darner Dawson is chief of the London woman "bobbies," and M.S. Allen is chief superintendent.
The force was organized in 1914, shortly after the outbreak of the war and has relieved the men of a large amount of responsibility. The force is uniformed, the women wearing military costumes with visored caps. They operate under the supervision, or with the authority of Sir Edward Henry, Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan police, and serve for duty at the munition plants where women workers are employed, besides doing regular patrol duty and welfare work.
The service in London is in the nature of a training for special service and the women after sufficient experience are sent to suburbs and small towns to do police duty. They are highly spoken of and declared to be very efficient, rendering service in the barrooms and looking after women in a manner that the regular "bobbies" cannot approximate.
It was declared in England, by way of closing the comment on this phase of the war that no one thing so stimulated the enlistments for service as the execution of Miss Edith Cavell, the English nurse who was shot as a spy by Germany. That her name will go down in history as a martyr to the cause of liberty and humanity goes without saying.
Miss Cavell had been a nurse in Brussels, and after the occupation of the Belgian capital by the Germans, she remained where she used her private hospital for the nursing of wounded soldiers; not excluding the Germans. It had been intimated that she had better cross the border, but she insisted on remaining at her post. Ultimately she was accused of being one of the instigators of a plot to smuggle English, French and Belgian soldiers across the lines, and of serving the enemies of Germany.
To the German mind she was more than a spy; Her conduct was reprehensible, because in the capacity of nurse she had won a degree of confidence. She was therefore held as a spy and traitor. And though Brand Whitlock, America's Minister to Belgium, and other diplomats sought to save her, she was shot by the ruthless Germans.