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.
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