Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 216, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 September 1915 — WAR WORKS BIG CHANGE MONG FRENCH WOMEN [ARTICLE]

WAR WORKS BIG CHANGE MONG FRENCH WOMEN

From the Highest to the Lowest All Are Working for Their Country. GET NEW OUTLOOK ON LIFE They Have Seen a New Vision and Have Learned the Joy There Is in Doing for Others —All Find Work to Do and Are Doing It Well. By EDWARD B. CLARK. Staff Correspondent of the Western Newspaper Union. Paris. —Lt is to be wondered if the world knows of the work of the women of France. In this great City of Paris every woman physically capable, is at work for her country. It may be true that the thought of the nations on the women of Paris has been that they are given to frivolity. In a large sense this thought never was true. Today it has no shred of truth in it, for the women of Paris from the humble quarters to the avenues of the St. Germain district are working for the cause of the country which they hold to be holy. The St. Germain section of Paris, spoken of usually as the Faubourg St. Germain, is the residence district of the men and the women of what sometimes is called the old regime. Here dwell the titled people of Paris, the counts and countesses and even the princes and the princesses who, under the old system of government, held not only titles intact but the honors which went with them. The women of the Faubourg St. Germain today are working side by side with the shop girls, the milliners and the dressmakers in an effort to do what they can for their country. All Is Different Now.

Always in Paris the housewife busies herself with domestic affairs for some hours each day. This was as true of the titled woman as it was of the wife of the Seine boatman, but beyond looking after her domestic affairs the woman of place and fashion in Paris did little other work. At night the opera or the ball claimed her attention. It was the life to which she was born. Now all is different. There was an awakening of the fashionable women of Paris at the outbreak of the preseMV •war. They found that conditions had changed since the last war with the Germans in 1870. Then the sisters of charity did most of the nursing work. It was their work to look after the poor and the needy. There are not as many sisters of charity in Paris today as there were years ago, and those who are left are able to do only a small part of the duties which today confront the women of the city. The women of fashion and title in Paris last August went out rather timidly to work in the hospitals. They were not trained nurses, but they could do something. They found an interest in what in many cases was real manual labor. They got a new outlook on life. Today some of them confess that they hold their past lives wasted. When this war is over the Women of Paris will continue to work for the good of mankind. Find Other Fields for Endeavor. After the first work in the hospitals the women of Paris learned that there were other fields better fitted for their endeavor. The trained nurses came from all parts of the earth to take their places at the bedsides of the wounded. “What else can We do?" This was the question that the women of former leisure put to themselves. They realized suddenly that all the able-bodied men of the city had gone to the front and that they had left wives and children behind them who needed help and guidance, and ,in many eases, work. The women of the Faubourg St. Germain went into the byways of Paris and ministered to their more lowly sisters. Many shops in Paris have closed because of the war, thus throwing many women and girls out of work. The women of Paris blessed with wealth, used it to start workshops of their own where the unemployed could

earn money by making things necessary for the soldiers at the front, and for the hospitals at the* rear. The fashionable women of Paris have learned many things of which they were in complete ignorance. They know now what social endeavor means, and they understand the spirit which prompted American women to establish social settlements and to attempt to help those who seemed powerless to help themselves. When this war is over social settlement work In Paris will be upon a firm foundation, the stones o£ it being laid by women who 13 months ago hardly knew what social endeavor meant, except in a society sense. There is only one woman’s club in the whole city of Paris, and that is little more than what might be called a “Tea club.” An American woman who is the president of a woman’s club in the city of Washington came to Paris recently. The French women of high estate asked her to tell them all about woman’s club life in America, the so-called social uplift, and the general plan of women to do good in the communities in which they dwell.

The women of Paris were told what they wanted to know. They showed deep interest in the effort of American women to make life easy, to do something for the mothers, and to make the way of the working girl easier. It is perhaps almost startling to say that the women of Paris are showing an interest in woman suffrage. Thirteen months ago a society woman of Paris would have been held almost an anarchist if she had expressed a desire to know of woman’s suffrage with a view of possible conversion to a belief in it. When this war is over there can be no doubt that woman’s clubs will be founded in Paris, that they will have large memberships and that into their work will be thrown a spirit of devotion. Put In Regular Hours. From eight o’clock every morning until five o’clock in the afternoon the society women of Paris work either in the hospitals or in the shops where employment has been given to those whom war has deprived of the opportunity to earn their daily bread. At fivfe o’clock the society women go back home to enjoy the only relaxation of the day* To a considerable extent, Paris has taken over the English custom of tea drinking. The women of the city drink tea at five o’clock, and

with it eat bread very lightly spread with butter. No cake is served, because cake is an extravagance as they view it, and moreover to leave it alone is to practice self-denial. Anything that the French woman can do to save money she does, and the money she saves she gives to the cause of her country. The readers of correspondence from Paris will remember the tragic death by a fall from an aeroplane of Henry Beach Needham, the well-known writer for American magazines. Needham was my close friend. He was a man, and a writer of sterling stuff. He always was keen for a story, and when he got it he knew how to write IL‘ He stuck to the truth and he always made the truth attractive. Just before Needham was killed I dined with him and he discussed with me the aeroplane trip which he hoped to take. His plan was, and the military authorities had assented to it, to make a trip over Paris at night in a military machine with a military aviator. It was his wish to write a description of a view of a great city partially hidden under the blanket of night.

Tribute to Henry Beach Needham. ' He wanted to determine whether or not it was possible for an enemy aviator to pick out specific objects upon which to throw his bombs. Of course, it was not Needham’s intention to tell what buildings could be discerned, and separated from their fellows by the eye of the soarer. His thought simply was to answer the disputed question as to whether or not an aviator could tell a hospital or a military barracks from the peaceful residence of a civilian.

Needham was full of his project. He knew absolutely nothing of fear. He had been at the front where the bullets were flying and the shells were falling. His courage was proof. His wholq, plan was changed by the arrival in Paris of Lieutenant Warneford, an aviator of the British army. Warneford had won fame, the Victoria cross, and the cross of the Legion of Honor by his daring flying exploit, when he destroyed a Z'ppelin in midair.

Henry Beach Needham asked the military authorities to let him go up in a new aeroplane on a trial trip with Lieutenant Warneford. He rose from the ground waving his hand to the bystanders. In less than two minutes the machine collapsed and both its occupants were hurled to the ground and killed. This newspaper man had gone through almost every form of danger that Europe’s war field holds. He met his death in what was believed to be an absolutely safe adventure. He expected to return to America immediately after this, his last wartime story —getting assignment. He was a close friend and a loted companion. Censors Are. Helpful. The French censors are not very hard on a correspondent. When you go to the front you always are accompanied by an army officer who almost invariably also acts as censor of what you write. He gives you some words of advice concerning what you maj say and what you may not say, and thus makes your writing very easy. He gives you a great deal of liberty and the only thing that he requests, is that nothing shall be put in your articles that may be of assistance to the enemy. The censor has been painted as a very formidable and frequently very grouchy dictatorial person. He is not, More than half the time a correspondent is allowed to sit by the censor and to watch him while he goes over the manuscript with a blue pencil. The pencil is infrequently used. The military officers who go to the front with the correspondent all speak English and everyone of them has a keen curiosity concerning things American.