The Living Present by Gertrude Atherton

I

One of the most striking results of the Great War has been the quickening in thousands of European women of qualities so long dormant that they practically were unsuspected. As I shall tell in a more general article, the Frenchwomen of the middle and lower bourgeoisie and of the farms stepped automatically into the shoes of the men called to the colors in August, 1914, and it was, in their case, merely the wearing of two pairs of shoes instead of one, and both of equal fit. The women of those clearly defined classes are their husbands' partners and co-workers, and although physically they may find it more wearing to do the work of two than of one, it entails no particular strain on their mental faculties or change in their habits of life. Moreover, France since the dawn of her history has been a military nation, and generation after generation her women have been called upon to play their important role in war, although never on so vast a scale as now.