ainst all authority and to
drive away their officers. The heads of the soldiers were turned, and
good and bad, brave men and cowards, joined in the confusion that was
increasing day by day, and the ruin that was sweeping over Russia's
fortunes.

The simple heart and mind of Yashka, however, proved to be more astute
and better versed in the conduct of war than most of the Russians. She
saw what disorder was doing to the army, and worn out in spirit as well
as in body, sought leave to return from a war where there was no
fighting to her own home.

But finally the idea came to her to form a battalion of women soldiers
and shame the men into returning to the front, from which they had been
deserting in large numbers. She thought that if the soldiers saw
Russian women in the ranks, doing battle with the enemy and proving
themselves braver than the men themselves, perhaps they would be shamed
into renewing the combat; that if women advanced in the front rank, the
men would follow and the war would be resumed. Yashka knew too well
that there could be no real peace so long as the Germans remained on
Russian soil; and that further war was the only way to drive them out
of Russia.

Fired with her idea she went to the leading powers of the Russian
Government and asked permission to form a battalion of women soldiers,
who were to make every sacrifice, visit the most dangerous parts of the
battle front, and unhesitatingly be killed in order that the men might
follow them into battle. The Government leaders, including Kerensky,
approved of the idea; and Maria commenced to make speeches, calling on
the women to enlist beneath her standard in the "Battalion of Death,"
as her new organization was to be named.

The response was instantaneous. So many women offered to enlist that
she had difficulty in accepting all of them, and she resolutely weeded
out those that seemed unfit, enacting a strict and severe discipline,
more rigorous, in fact, than any that had been undergone by the male
soldiers. With rifles supplied by the Government, and with men acting
as drill sergeants, she trained her girls until they were well versed
in the elements of soldiering, and after they had become proficient in
the use of the rifle she prepared to entrain for the front, this time
an officer with a thousand or more soldiers under her command.

But her system of training and the severe penalties she exacted from
her soldiers brought her into opposition