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A Servian Mother Saying Qood Bye to Her Children
Before Going to War.
By Dr. Hans Utildricksen,
!E most RlKnlflrant Indication
of the final and catastrophic
nature of the present world-
war In that women are everywhere
reported to be preparing to take part
in It. Many of them hare already
done bo.
This means that the nations In
volved are struggling for their very
existence. 'When such a crisis is
reached, that half of the nation
which Is normally tmmllitary but
which has at leant as great a stake
In the country as the other half, Is
drawn in. This Is "the last ditch"
stage of warfare. Then the most
terrible extreme of human savagery
are reached. Woman In war is in
credibly cruel, for ahe throws aside
all reason and flghU simply with in
stinctive fury.
Hundreds of episodes can be cited
from history showing the reckless
ferocity with which women have
fought in war. The Instance of
Countess Zriny, who blew up her
castle and herself when the maraud
ing Turks had entered In its walls.
Is typical of many mediaeval occur
ences. Napoleon's soldiers in Spain
were resisted with mad fury by the
Spanish peasant woman, and for that
reason he never effectively con
quered the country. In proportion,
as women make their appearance in
the present conflict, will its ferocity
be determined.
The English militant suffragettes
have declared a truce in their own
war with established conditions, and
some of them have announced their
readiness to go to the front to fight
for the country they have for years
pestered and under the leadership of
the officials they have heckled.
Numbers of Servian women have
enlisted, as they did la the late nal
kan war, under their battle-tattered
flag. The Monteaegrln women are
eager to .light for their country. The
German women are actively prepar
ing for war. French women,
at present, barred collectively,
are trying Individually to slip
into the French regiments dis
guised ss men. Fleets of aero
planes In charge of skilled avta
trlcea are being organt3d ia
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France. Rome of those Germans,
who paosed the forts at Liege only
to die In the dust of the highway,
were started on their terrestrial
journey by a bullet sped by a flaming
eyed nelglan woman. Russian
women, who played brilliant parts
as spies, are now clamoring for a
place In the field, and those acquaint
ed with the subtleties of the fem
inine Russian, which are without
number, expeot to see her figuring In
the great engagements.
Women are not natnral combat
ants. They do not rush into war for
war's sake. .They are wtthout the
blood lust that, makes fighting a Joy
for fighting's sake. They will fight
only In desperate straits, and then
only for their honor, their children,
or the existence of their country.
Standing at one of these last ditches,
however, they fight with the ferocity
of tigers. They do battle without
rule or reason and to the death. An
Englishwoman, who Is endeavoring
to organize a company of women for
military training, said that she did
not fear that they would not fight,
but the fear was that they might
fight too fiercely. They are the
most cruel of combatants, when they
so far overcome their native woman
ly gentleness as to enter into com
bat. A soldier of experience said that
he would rather fight a company of
male soldiers than one woman sol
dier. He explained that woman Is too
resourceful In the matter of weapons.
War transforms woman tor the time
Into a beast. Kipling pointed out
that the female of the species is more
deadly than the male, referring to
her, without doubt, in her fighting
phase. In. moments of the wildest
excitation. Induced by war, she has
surpassed any of the atrocities ever
committed In the name of war by
men. There la for the horror of na
tions the incident of that campaign
in the Netherlands by the Spanish
army, whan the Dutch women cut
out the hearts of captured Span
lards and dung them across the
walls of the cities In the face of the
approaching army.
Women are instinctively afraid ot
a mouse. They will flee from it.
climb upon a chair and scream. Tet
there is record of the bravery of
1.000 Doer Amnions who fought on
the firing line and in the trenches at
Spton Kop and Ladysmlth.
An eye witness tells of fourteen
women who fought beside their hus
bands. Entrenched In one position,
they held It against a British force
with incredible bravery. Fifty of the
Rrttlah soldiers, with their bayonets
fixed, charged the intrenchment The
Doers crawled over the earthworks
to meet them, and while the women
covered them with their shooting,
triod with the butta of their rifles to
disable the British. Before the eyes
A soldier of
experience - said
r
A Regiment of Women Soldiers Recently Formed in China.
.'.It.
Because,
Explains
Psychology,
They Only
Fight When
the Existence
of Their
Homes and
Their
Children Is
Threatened
with
Annihilation
as in the
Present War
of their wives every one of the
Boers was run through and pinned
to the earth by a bayonet. Not one
of the fourteen women widowed in
that bloody engagement screamed
or fainted. All fought aa silent
furies.
A British survivor of the battle
said it was like fighting with a mute
wild cat. It had taken five minutes
to kill the men. The women fought
for half an hour, no one of them
crying quarter, and, when the Brit
ish soldiers wiped their bleeding
faces and tried to mend their hope
lessly torn clothing, not one of the
fourteen widows had aurvived her
husband. Two daya later, when the
British retired across the Tugela,
twenty-eight corpses, fourteen men
and fourteen women, were found
within a radius of one hundred feet,
their bodies crimsoned, their faces
set In the grim lines of battle, and
the grimmest of the faces were
those of the women.
A Boer girl, seeing her twin sister
shot down by an English officer, her
self snatched his sword and ran it
through hta body. The sight of the
girl fury standing over his body,
hacking it as though she wee cut
ting a log of wood for a kitchen fire,
stopped the onslaught of the British
force. The girl died, the sword
gripped in her stiffening hand, heap
ing curses on the English.
These examples of ferocity in bat
tle are not exceptional. They are
characteristic of the woman at bay.
By nature compassionate, when she
turns cruel, her cruelty haa no
limit. It is one of the paradoxes of
human nature that the gentle sex
becomes under one condition the
cruellest. That state is the atate of
extreme war. Not a political war.
Not a war of diplomatic hair-splitting
or schoolmaster technicalities,
but one that threatens the sanctity
of her person, the lives of her chil
dren, or the existence of her country.
Digging through the stratum of
undeniable fact that women ar the
cruellest of soldiers when at the last
ditch, I have found the supporting
stratum of reason to be that In war
her nature is transformed. Tl.at, too,
is evident in the reports of 'every
bat tin in whlc'i Amazons have en
gaged. But why do the gsntlest of
human beings become the most sav
age?
in part because nature is an ex
tremist, sending the pendulum swing
ing from gentleness to ferocity aa
from night to day, from Summer to
Winter.
But it is my deduction that they
are the most ferocious of warriors
because they are Impelled by an in
sanity of fear. They fight frantically
because they have lost their heads.
Terror has driven them mad. It has
made them utterly reckless of conse
quences. Fright baa made them des
perate with an awful desperation.
The spirit that leads women Into
war Is the same as that which leads
bi ths 6lr Company. Urrat Britain
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A. Historic Bohemian Episode, in Which the Countess Zriny Blew Up the Powder Magazine of Her'
Own Castle to Destroy the Invading Turks. Painting by A. Zick.
them into the crime of manslaugh
ter; for war is only manslaughter on
a larger scale. It Is not in the na
ture of the normal female human
deliberately to plan the taking of
human life. In the breast that has
nursed mankind there lives no thirst
for killing. When a woman kills It
Is in defense of or In guarding some
thing she holds dear. In a word, she
is frightened Into ferocity.
In the consciousness of the' women
of Servia and the Montenegrin
women there is an obsession that by
Joining the army they will double the
fighting force of the countries that
are threatened with extlnctlor.
Fright at thought of what may bo
fall their country and themselves If
undefended, or If Inadequately de
fended, has driven them for the time
insane. The female patriot of Ger
many has visions in the stillness of
the night of her great, clean, calm,
strong country being sponged out of
existence, of being removed from the
slate of 'Europe, sacrificed to num
bers, as was Poland. Those visions
have maddened her to the point of
fighting, killing, mutilating, while
the red nvlst of rage is before her
eyes. The French women are
afraid. They fear the menace of the
mailed fist which Wllhelm of Ger
many once placed in a phrase, but
which' he has now raised to strike.
Trembling before that mailed (1st,
the French women have inflated
There Were Submarines Hundreds of Years Ago
IN a book soon tq be published Professor M. Z. Tour
neur, of Dieppe, France, says that submarines
have7 almost aa hoary a paBt as aeroplanes, which,
as is well known, involve ideas that are centuries old.
The result of his researches haa proved that ub
marlnes were 1 built as early as the beginning of the
seventeenth century. - The origin of the invention it
older still. Aristotle tells how Alexander the Great
made use of submarines during the siege of Tyre
more than 300 years before Christ
A Dutchman named Cornelius Van Drebbel astounded
London in 1620 with a submarine that held twelve
oarsmen and some passengers, among whom was iting
James L
Previous to this, in 1334, a monk suggested the idea
that a ship be constructed of metal so as to be water
tight and able to resist the pressure of water. "If a
sufficient weight be placed in such a ship bo as to equal
the volume of water displaced it could go on wheels at
the bottom ot the water or else sail beneath the sur
face by means of oars." he said. The necessary aera
tion, be suggested, could be established by means ot
water-tight leather tubes, which could also serve as a
means of communication with the outside.
He also suggested other means ot constructing a sub
marine. It could have the shape ot a large bell wita
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their souls with courage. Some of
them, still sane enough, despite their
terror, for sustained consecutive
thought, have turned to the uses of
war their unique talent. French
women, the most skilled avlatrlces
of the world, are planning a cam
paign of the upper air. They will be
scouts and Warriors of the skies.
Will such an appalling disaster over
take them as befell the German avi
ator, who, flying above Liege,, was
attacked by a Belgian aeronaut, who
cut his aeroplane to pieces and sent
his body hurling .through space to
the feet of a group of the women of
Liege T Ordinarily these women of
Liege would have screamed and cov
ered their. faces at the crumpled
horror. But the dispatches say that
. these women laugbed, bhat one of
them Bpurned the broken body with
her foot; that one, a young girl and
beautiful, fiancee of a Belgian offi
cer, ran to her home to bring a knife
to mutilate the limp, helpless thing
that five minutes before had been an
enemy. It was the Belgian officer
himself, according to the story,
which is reasonable In the light of
the unreason of women in war, who
prevented her from carrying out her
hideous plan. It - illustrates the
truth that though in the planning for
war men are more cruel, in the car
rying out of war women exceed them
ia cruelty.
If England permits the enlistment
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of women, every fair soldier of them
will be as mad as the maddest mili
tant. It will not require the sight of
Mrs. General Drummond leading her
army upon the Houses of Parliament
to set loose the fighting devils that
slumber in the breast ot the gentlest
woman. Fear of the enemy will re
lease Imprisoned hatred, and hatred
will run amuck into murder and pil
lage. The Russian? Scratch a Russian
and you will reveal a savage. Tha
Tartar blood rises to the highest
flood in the women of the Russian
Empire.
All women are more elemental
than men. Farther removed from
the plane of logic, they are more
prone to extremes . Women are na
ture's radicals. . -
I myself saw a husband and wife,
both in the uniform of the Servian
army, bid farewell to their eight
children. They - ordered the little,
ones to sal te, and when one, tbs
littlest. Instead wiped away his
tears with the back of his hand, it
was his mother who berated him for
cowardice.
It is fitting that. war should be
represented not by a mailed fist, nor
by a man In amor, but by a woman,
a female fury maddened to her work
by the deepest motive for crime
whether the single crime of murder
or the wholesale crime of war the
motive of fear. .
windows and a flat floor suitable for passengers. How
ever, the form of a fish he recommended as the most
logical and convenient. The ship would be able to go
backward or forward without turning. The propulsion
could be . obtained by wheels or - by ordinary oars.
. Leather machines for agitating and purifying the air
would be necessary. Lighting would be obtained from
phosphorescent bodies and the direction learned by aid
of the compass.
Such a submarine was constructed and was shown
to be practical to a certain degree. In 1537 a ship with,
twenty cannon, eighty sailors, and many bags ofi,
' money on board blew up and sank In the port ofi
Dieppe. Three years later a Frenchman, Jean Barrle,
called Pradlne, built according to the old monk's ideas
a submarine with which he promised to rescue the
bags of gold and silver from the wreck and possibly
some pieces of artillery.
The Government guaranteed Pradlne the privilege of
working on the task for twelve years, authorized him
to "collect and appropriate" the iron and other things
that the lost ship contained, and even protected him
while working with an armed force. The great Pascal,
then a little boy, was an eye-witness to these experi
ments of Pradine, which were carried on till 1650 with
ultimate success.
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