Germany in War Time: What an American Girl Saw and Heard

by Mary Ethel McAuley

The second branch of nursing which every girl must learn thoroughly is taking care of infants. They must be taught the proper dressing for young babies, what babies must eat and when they must sleep. Also they must know what to do in cases of light infants' diseases and what to do for fussy babies and for teething babies.

Then they must learn something of social settlement work, and how to entertain sick and crippled children. They must help in the care of orphans and be able to make things for them. They must know something of kindergartening and know stories and games for children. Many German women who have lost their husbands in the war will be glad to have a place to send their children, and the army girls can take care of them.

After nursing come lessons in sewing, and besides the making of the common things the better class of girls will learn to make lace and to do fancy work. In the year's service the better class girls will sew for the poor and the poorer girls will sew for themselves.

Women Learn Gardening.

One prominent German woman thinks that it would be a good plan to have the girls serve their first half year of service at the age of fourteen, when they leave public school. At this time they would be taught house-keeping and cooking. Then, later, between the age of seventeen and twenty when it is most convenient to the girls they could do their second half year.

Nursing, sewing and cooking will be the main branches taught to the better class girls, but each of the poorer girls will be taught a special branch by which she can earn her own living, and something she can use in filling the places of the men when it is necessary, as in this war.

The better grade of the poorer girls will be taught book-keeping and typewriting. They will be taught to be telephone operators, and how to wait on customers properly. But a girl will be taught only one of these branches, and she will be allowed to choose the one that she likes best.

Of course most German girls get married, but they must have some specialty to fall back on in case of the men going to war, or in the case of the loss of a husband, when they may be left with many little children to support. When a girl has learned any specialty she must serve the State in that capacity whenever she is called upon to do so. That will be her duty, the same as a man's.