VITAL NECESSITY

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 254, 27 October 1942, Page 5

VITAL NECESSITY

WOMEN'S CO-OPERATION UNITED NATIONS' GOAL The gallant work which is being done by the women of Czechoslovakia both in their own martyred country and abroad, is discussed in this article by Madame Benes, wife of the President of the Czechoslovak Republic.

Far more is at stake in this war than in the war of 1914, says Madame Benes. It is a life and death struggle of two worlds of ideas, between which there can be no conciliation, and which cannot exist side by side. It is a war the outcome of which can only be the complete victory of one side and the complete destruction of the other. It is in fact a great moral, political and social revolution. There is an appointed place for all yomen, including those of Czechoslovakia, in this revolution. We are engaged in total war in every sense of the word, and the fullest co-operation of all the women of the nations at war is a vital necessity. The tragic fate which overtook my country when it found itself occupied by the Germans many months before the real outbreak of the war, unfortunately prevented the women of Czechoslovakia from taking part in the war for which they had so resolutely prepared themselves and upon which they had reckoned.

On the other hand, the unhappy situation laid an even more difficult and responsible task upon the Czechoslovak women—that of preserving the spirit of the nation's children from the pestilence of the Nazi "New Europe" doctrines, and of maintaining the national tradition of faith in the ideals of humanity in the spirit of Huss, Comenius and Masaryk.

One of the main spheres of our women's activities here is our Czechoslovak Red Cross. Our women are working there in all the numerous departments; in distributing clothes, in making up parcels for our men here, in the Middle East, in the Soviet Union and elsewhere; in the medical and nursing services; in cultural activities and in the numerous contacts which the Red Cross maintains with many organisations and individuals among the British, American and other Allies.

A nunvt>er of Czechoslovak women are helping in the British Red Cross in making up parcels for prisoners of war. Others have joined the British Women's Auxiliary Service. Many of them are employed in factories and in a number of British industrial concerns. Czechoslovak women doctors and nurses are working in British hospitals. Others are engaged in various special branches, where they can make full use of their knowledge of languages, of Central European conditions. And, finally, of course, a number of our women are working in our Government offices in London.

And to no less an extent do our women in the United States, the Soviet Union. Canada, South Africa and elsewhere in the democratic world help and play their part in the common struggle behind the front. Their number is smaller than in Great, Britain. But proportionately their collaboration does not lag behind. But. all the work of our women abroad pajes before the terrible sacrifices which are being made by Czech women at home. This spirit of active and unyielding resistance which could not be smashed or even weakened by the most ruthless methods of the aggressor has been the same among Czech men and Czech women. Czechoslovak women have been dragged to concentration camps. You have only to recall how, during the first mass persecutions, in the autumn of 1939, Czech women students as well as the men students were taken from their colleges and homes and imprisoned in German camps. The names of women and girls of all ages and all classes have figured in the recent terrible lists of those who have faced Hitler's firing squads, which murdered whole families of Czech patriots, regardless x° T r -^ nc * t ' le terrible fate which Nazi ferocity prepared for the whole community of Lidice was shared by all the women of that village.—Auckland Star and N.A.N.A.