ncerned with biology; but
as a matter-of-fact statistics regarding the staying power of women in
what for all the historic centuries have been regarded as avocations
heaven-designed and with strict reference to the mental and physical
equipment of man, are too contradictory to be of any value.

Therefore, the result of this prolonged strain on a healthy woman of a
Northern race evidently predestined to be as public as their present
accomplishment, will be awaited with the keenest interest, and no
doubt will have an immense effect upon the future status of woman. She
has her supreme opportunity, and if her nerves are equal to her nerve,
her body to her spirit, if the same women are working at the severe
tasks at the end of the war as during the first months of their
exaltation, and instead of being wrecks are as hardened as the
miserable city boys that have become wiry in the trenches--then,
beyond all question woman will have come to her own and it will be for
her, not for man, to say whether or not she shall subside and attend
to the needs of the next generation.

Before I went to France in May 1916 I was inclined to believe that
only a small percentage of women would stand the test; but since then
I have seen hundreds of women at work in the munition factories of
France. As I have told in another chapter, they had then been at work
for some sixteen months, and, of poor physique in the beginning, were
now strong healthy animals with no sign of breakdown. They were more
satisfactory in every way than men, for they went home and slept all
night, drank only the light wines of their country, smoked less, if at
all, and had a more natural disposition toward cleanliness. Their bare
muscular arms looked quite capable of laying a man prostrate if he
came home and ordered them about, and their character and pride had
developed in proportion.[F]

[F] Dr. Rosalie Morton, the leading woman doctor and surgeon of New
York, who also studied this subject at first hand, agrees with
me that the war tasks have improved the health of the European
women.

It is not to be imagined, however, that the younger, at least, of
these women will cling to those greasy jobs when the world is normal
again and its tempered prodigals are spending money on the elegancies
of life once more. And if they slump back into the sedentary life when
men are ready to take up their old burdens, making artificial flowers,
standing all day in