Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 63, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 March 1918 — WOMEN ARE POWER in NEW RUSSIA [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WOMEN ARE POWER in NEW RUSSIA

By LIEUTENANT NORTON C. TRAVIS

In Philadelphia Public Ledger. USSIA’S women, alone, stand today •ww shoulder to shoulder with men. They occupy, Indeed, a place higher than that of men of their own nation, for the spotlight of the world is turned upon them. In the scales of blind Justice, where are balanced autocracy or democracy for Russia, it is the Russian woman who turns the balance for JeT freedom. , k Russian women soldiers, virtually ■■■■■■ untrained and unofficered, drove back the Germans in their first’ trial of fire. For eighteen days I was quartered in the first \ line of trenches with 2,500 of these Russian women warriors. I studied them at close quarters —there are no more intrepid soldiers in all this world than were those women of a "divided and bewildered nation. The Battalion of Death is no more. They were wiped oufeJty German shells and German bayonets, and only lour wounded survivors remain of 200 who fought through hell fire to shame the men of Russia into a sense of patriotic duty. To lack of training and of officers is ascribed the annihilation of this first battalion of women warriors in the modern world. They failed in their object—|he stimulating of compatriots to defense of their country. That free Russia fears the power of women is indicated by the fact that those who were connected with the imperial circle of the former court are confined in the prison of Peter and Paul, guarded by barriers of water as well as by walls of stone, while minor offenders have been banished from Petrograd. < The Russian woman warrior is the product of outdoor life and simple, wholesome food. In the ranks one finds the majority of soldiers from the upper class of Russian society, and by their sides are serfs and peasants accustomed to working in the fields of Siberia and Russia with the men of their households. Ladies of Russia are noted for their proficiency in outdoor games and sports; they are great walkers, skaters, horseback riders 'and devotees to sledding, games that require vigor and furnish excitement, and to their summer and winter carnivals and pageants, which occur several times a year. At these times it is their pleasure to indulge in native folk dances, and dancing on the ice is a pastime to which they are devoted, and to which, I believe, they owe much of their muscular development and rapidity and ease of action. The life of the Russian woman has bred her to war’s service; she does not care for afternoon teas or any form of indoor amusement during the daytime. Instead you will find her engaged in active sports on the frozen Neva, beside the trolley tracks that link Icebound towns in a chain of gay activity, even more bustling than when boats ply the river in summer and fetch and carry between Russia’s capital and the Neva’s outlying villages. And now you will 'find women at the switches along the shining miles of ice-floored single track of the Neva’s winter trolley lines. In singular contrast to the sturdy, muscular build of Russian women, stocky of form and short of stature, are Russian men of the upper class, who, yvhen they acquire refinement and high-breeding, seem, also, to become weak and effeminate. Not only in trench work, but in the ordinary avocations of men one now finds Russian women. Street-car conductors and motorwomen handle the traffic with efficiency. Conductors call nut the streets, and from the second belt on the man’s coat that tops their blue skirts, they draw checks of varying colors and hand them out in receipt of fares. These colors represent from one to five fares, and also indicate the distance a passenger expects to travel. One fare now costs fifteen kopecks, or two and a half cents. Under ordinary conditions fifteen kopecks were worth five cents. But two and a half cents is a lot of money in Russia today. On the other hand, while women fill places on railroads and street cars, there are still to be found many men driving motortrucks. Another avocation of women is the driving of draskeys —Russian dumpcarts —a flat, two-wheeled wagon drawn by one <?r two horses. In the lattler case one horse is always harnessed outside the shafts, leaving the burden to be borne by the animal inside of theih. This peculiar method of harnessing is even cay* ried out in ambulances at the front, and a woiinded man transported in this fashion usually has the life bounced out of him on his way to the hosp ta . Sometimes, Indeed, such makeshift ambulances are drawn by men, for life Is accounted so cheap in Russia that the Russian will not use horses when men can serve the purpose of draft animals. Not only men, but women, take the place of horses. They often draw their field kitchens about, and bivouac to cook their good bread, made of wheat and rye flour; their soup, horse meat and vegetables. Russian horse meat Is not half bad, and that Is their principal army meat. Horses are plentiful, b>it very small, and they do not furnish much beef, so that numbers are slaughtered to

obtain a sufficient supply. I should judge, that Russian ponyskin coats, which have often been so popular in America, ought to be cheaper than ever this season if there has been any way of curing and transporting the skins of these glossycoated animals of the steppes. Women’s army kitchens are adequately supplied with horse meat, _ and from ladies of rank to serfs the women soldiers have learned how to prepare palatable food. They have also learned not only to draw their field pieces, but actually carry them. All women are enrolled in the infantry division of the army, so that theirs are machine guns, which three or four women can carry together. Some of these guns are light enough to be borne on the shoulders of *one woman. While Russians are not good marksmen they are expert at bayonet work, and there is nothing the Germans fear more than a Russian bayonet encounter, when the sturdy dwarf of the North not only sticks his enemy through, but has an appalling habit of lifting him up on the bayonet. I saw one victim of this, shocking act slide off the keen blade, dead. And if the Germans fear such attacks of uninspired Russian men, they dread the savage charge of fiery Russian women, and when they succeeded in capturing three in battle they tortured them to death by way of "satisfying spite against those hundreds of young women who lay slain —martyrs to patriotism. I watched women soldiers dig out their own trenches, where rain or bombardment had caused them to fall in; pull around their heavy ammunition wagons and guns, as well as their field kitchens, and set up their barbed-wire entanglements. Many of them were noblewomen and wealthy members of the “upper froth” of Russia; quite a number were wives and mothers whose husbands were fighting in another sector’on the line; and every one was a volunteer. With courage went cheerfulness. In the midst of the hardships of trench life—and they can scarcely be overestimated—these women sang ballads and catchy songs as they worked at the business of death. Some played on musical instruments that they had brought into the trenches, while most of them found time to attend to the comfort of their pets, especially the battalion mascots —a parrot and a cat. , { , Ail were short of clothing—simple as was their uniform. It consisted of a grayish khaki colored material, llkte washed-out khaki, made in overalls and jumper, with a tight-fitting high collar and belt. They wore the same boots as were used by men, and some had'their feet encased in shoes and puttees. One of the chief difficulties in equipping women has been to fit the “upper froth” with boots, and to the rigors of trench life has been added the discomfort and, I fancy, pain of dainty feet in coarse, heavy unaccustomed boots, standing often in a mire of mud and water. Women soldiers had shifts of ten days in firstline trenches of the enemy, with four hours on find, four hours off duty. At the least unusual noise or sudden skirmish the whole 2,500 women were out and in readiness for battle. Every thirty feet in the women’s sector stood a “post,” or sentry, who fired without ceasing, was her duty to call out, on occasion, the soldiers who rested in their malodorous dugouts on shelves that protruded from the walls along each side. Mere children were many of these modern Amasons, for their ages vary from fifteen to thirty-five years, and for ten days on a stretch they had no

opportunity to change or remove their clothings When not fighting or on sentry duty the women rest as best they may in their dugouts, where roar of guns does not penetrate very loudly. No-ven-tilation reaches these deep burrows under the hlll* except that at the entrance to the trench, and conditions are offensive to every sense of comfort and sanitation. Our Red Cross commission sought to remedy some of the worst features of Russian trench life, but modern war is one of unbelievable horrors, not the least of which is the Insect pestilence of the trenches. Every ten days a section of trench is cleaned upand its occupants are stripped, sprayed with a& Insect destroyer, brushed down with brooms, given a bath and clean clothes. In singular contrast tn the many antiquated methods of battlefield existence common in the Russian army are comfortable bath trains provided for the soldiers’ fortnightly As the world knows, the Battalion of Death was organized by Madame Vera Butchkareff, who lived in a, small Cossack settlement in Siberia at the outbreak of the war. When Madame Butchkareff’s husband was killed in battle she formed the Legion of Death, mainly to shame Russian men into action, and partly, to relieve the awful suspense and monotony of village life far from the scene of strife. Therefore, in the original ranks of women warriors were to be found hardy peasants from the vast agricultural region of Siberia, and many such women belong to the present regiments of feminine soldiers. Far different from their once peaceful, remote lives is the terrific action of the battlefront, where instead of distant sparks of stars in quiet skies, they witness clusters of shells shrieking upward, five a minute, and bursting around a moving speck in the heavens —some airplane target for great guns. Timed to explode at 5,000 or- 6,000 feet, as well as the distance of the plane can be gauged, the shell turns to fall at the designated height and shrapnel sprays the night skies with vivid fountains of flame. In the great Russian upheaval Siberia has determined to achieve an independence of its own. I found the people In this vast storehouse of nature’s wealth distinct in type from those in any other part of Russia. They are a mixture of Mongol and Russ; a peculiar young-old folk. Nowhere else in the world have I found as strange looking people. The men have a drawn expression and fixed, staring eyes. Women, too, exhibit this characteristic to a marked degree, and everywhere one finds the form of youth surmounted by the facial appearance of age. I wondered whether this expression proceeded from the squalor of their meager lives. They are an exceedingly dirty, filthy people; ragged for the most part, and with feet shod in a sort of straw sandal. With a land of rare agricultural, timber and mineral wealth surrounding them, they yet wear an appearance of stolid dejection.