the front, did duty as ambulance riders, "dirty
nurses," in a Red Cross rescue station at the Yser trenches, in relief
work for refugees, and in the commissariat department. We tended wounded
soldiers, sick soldiers, sick peasants, wounded peasants, mothers,
babies, and colonies of refugees.

This war gave women one more chance to prove themselves. For the first
time in history, a few of us were allowed through the lines to the front
trenches. We needed a man's costume, steady masculine nerves, physical
strength. But the work itself became the ancient work of woman--nursing
suffering, making a home for lonely, hungry, dirty men. This new thrust
of womanhood carried her to the heart of war. But, once arriving there,
she resumed her old job, and became the nurse and cook and mother to
men. Woman has been rebelling against being put into her place by man.
But the minute she wins her freedom in the new dramatic setting, she
finds expression in the old ways as caretaker and home-maker. Her
rebellion ceases as soon as she is allowed to share the danger. She is
willing to make the fires, carry the water, and do the washing, because
she believes the men are in the right, and her labor frees them for
putting through their work.

It all began for me in Paris. I was studying music, and living in the
American Art Students' Club, in the summer of 1914. That war was
declared meant nothing to me. There was I in a comfortable room with a
delightful garden, the Luxembourg, just over the way. That was the first
flash of war. I went down to the Louvre to see the Venus, and found the
building "Ferme." I went over to the Luxembourg Galleries--"Ferme,"
again--and the Catacombs. Then it came into my consciousness that all
Paris was closed to me. The treasures had been taken away from me. The
things planned couldn't be done. War had snatched something from me
personally.

Next, I took solace in the streets. I had to walk. Paris went mad with
official speed--commandeered motors flashed officers down the boulevards
under martial law. They must get a nation ready, and Paris was the
capital. War made itself felt, still more, because we had to go through
endless lines,--_permis de sejours_ at little police stations--standing
on line all day, dismissed without your paper, returning next morning.
Friends began to leave Paris for New York. I was considered queer for
wishing to stay on. The chance to study in Paris was the dream of a
lifetime. But,