MODERN WOMAN

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 112, 13 May 1937, Page 29

MODERN WOMAN

SEEKING ADVENTURE

SOLDIERS AND POLITICIANS

REMARKABLE RECORD

'It has been reported from London that Mr. E. W. Walker, the leader of the British expedition which is to sail for; the Antarctic Continent in June; has received applications from 1300 women who want to become members of .the expedition, says, a writer in the Melbourne "Age." All of these applications have been declined, as Mr. Walker believes that women could not stand up to -the'- strenuous conditions, of an expedition i which will spend a lengthy, period; in- the Antarctic. The expedition will consist of 32 members, including the crew of the schooner in.' which they willembark. The schooner, which will be rechristened ttie Shackle-, ton, in memory of Sir Ernest Shackleton, the famous Antarctic explorer, who died in 1922, is expected to reach Lyttelton, New Zealand, in November, and will spend a month there before sailing for the Antarctic, where the summer months will be spent in scien-. title work. The expedition will return to Lyttelton for the winter, and will' go back to the Antarctic in the following summer. The fact .that 1300 women want to_ join this expedition is an indication of the extent to .which the spirit of adventure has spread among • women, and the rapid advance that has been made, in the emancipation of the sex from the shackles which for centuries man imposed on her. Up to the'present no woman has set foot on the Antarctic Continent, but it may happen in the. near future that -we shall hear of an expedition to the Antarctic consisting, exclusively of women. Then it will be the revengeful privilege of the leader of the expedition to announce that thousands of applications have been received from men* anxious to become members of the expedition, but that all have been declined as she believes that men are not fitted to withstand the rigorous conditions of an Antarctic expedition. - . ROLE OF MRS. PEARY. With regard to the Arctic, womari has; already broken the ice, so to speak. The-first woman to be,allowed to join an expedition to the Arctic regions was Mrs. ■ Peary r wife of Commander Robert E. Peary. In 1891-92 she accompanied her husband in an expedition which sledged 1300 miles from McCormick Bay to the north-east coast of Greenland. But, •of course^ Mrs.' Peary was not the first /Woman to travel in"th 6 Arctic regions.''".For cen|turies Eskimo women have lived there with their families. }~. :It would be;.a mistake to regard the; spirit:of adventure which is becoming increasingly evident among women as, an entirely modern phase of feminism.. In all ages and in all countries there' have been adventuresome women who have invaded spheres of activity which were regarded as predominantly masi: culine. England has produced female! soldiers, sailors, pugilists, pirates, and; highwaymen. In the American Civil; War there were female combatants on; both sides. Those on the side of they,, North included Sarah Taylor, a \ girl of eighteen years;'who was the idol'ofthe Tennessee regiments; Mary Elleri: Wise, who was wounded as a private' in the 34th Regiment of Indiana Volun-; teers, and Mary Dennis, a lady of 6 feet 2 inches, who held a commission in the Stillwater Company of the First; Minnesota Regiment. ; And there.was, a "female military company"'- ove^j thirty strong, formed, at Falmouth; neat*, Covington, Kentucky, who paraded'iffi ■ a uniform consisting of "an apron of old-fashioned cut, made of "red,' white,; and blue—the part covering thejbbsom representing .the stars, and ,tHe":-iowery part the .stripes, whose, graceful; drilling presented, at once a most novel"and highly pleasing spectacle."' ' / ■ > IN THE GREAT WAR. There were female soldiers in the Great War. "Russia during the last stages of its participation," writes Mr. Reginald Hargraves in his entertaining book "Women at Arms," "not only provided a female 'Battalion of Death' under ; the'command of a colonel's widow, Madame Botchiareva, but witnessed the donning by many peasant; women oi the military garb, which enabled them to fight side by side with their menfolk, thus following the precedent set. by the women of Serbia in the war between Turkey and the Balkan League in 1912." As far as is known only one Englishwoman and one Irishwoman took part in the Great War as combatants. The representative of. England was a girl named Dorothy Lawrence, and her activities at the front line were limited to ten days; but the Irishwoman, Flora, Sandes, who was well known in Aus-, tralia, served with .the Serbian .army! for nearly three years. She left England in August, 1914, for the Serbian front as a nurse in an ambulance unit,' and stayed in Serbia during the early months of the conflict; She returned to England in 1915 to recuperate, arid when she went back to Serbia in November of that year she found the Serbian army in full retreat before' the Austrians and Bulgarians. She, was unable to reach her ambulance unit amidst the confusion created by the retreat, and at Prilip she attached' herself to the , regimental ambulance of .the Second Serbian Infantry Regiment. In this disastrous retreat, which continued week after "week, the wounded had to be left behind to the mercy of the advancing enemy, and there was little work for the nurses attached to the regiment to do-. Miss Sandes drifted along with the retreating headquarters of the Second Infantry Regiment. On the slopes of Mount Chukus the'rearguard halted to stem the pressure of the pursuit while the main body climbed ,to the crest. Miss Sandes was among the rearguard,' who, under the protection of the rocks, held up the enemy advance. BEGAN SHOOTING BACK. .But! before she.had been hiding behind the rocks for half an hour she began to resent being shot at, and she got hold of a rifle and some ammunition, and blazed away like the rest of the men ih her vicinity. At her own request, she was subsequently enrolled as a.soldier in the fourth company of the first battalion of the Second Infantry Regiment. Her entry into the war as a combatant was ; applauded by the Serbians, who .regarded her presence as a pledge of help from Great Britain in their fight against heavy odds: ."Welcomed eu•thusiastically by her fellow private soldiers," writes Mr.'7 Hargraves in "Women ,at Arms,". "she lived with them the life hey led, ate with them the harsh,'meagre food.they ate, suffered the same perils; and hardships that they- underwent^ and throughout it all she was acco^ed ;a chivalry of comradeship that re^Mßbered her sex, 'only to respect it." A.y^/*' <. -From that time to the end of the war she took an active ...part, in the fighting. She was- promoted • successively to the rank of, corporal, serr geant, and sergeant-major. In the victorious advance of the Serbians In 1918 to regain their country from the invader, she was wounded and taken to hospital, where she shared a tent with another wounded female soldier, Sergeant Milunka, a Serbian peasant girl, who was attached to another bat-i talion of the same regiment as»Ser-' geant-Major Sandes. ' j

It is of interest to recall how recent has been the' advance of emancipated womari.'-in breaking down the barricades .erected against her in this manmade'world. In much of this advance American women have led the way. It was the American State of Wyoming that first granted the Parliamentary franchise to women. This was in 1869, and it was not until twentyfour years later that its lead was followed by another American State, that of Colorado, as well as by New Zealand and South Australia. Victoria, which granted women the Parliamentary franchise in 1909, was the last of the Australian States to do so, and at that time the women of Australia had possessed for seven years the right to vote at elections for ihe Commonwealth Parliament. Great.Britain did not giant the Parliamentary franchise to Cornell until 1918, and then it was not granted on terms of equality with men. In Great Britain, men of twenty-one years of age and over had the right to vote, but this privilege was at.first restricted to women of thirty years and over. This restriction has since been removed. The first woman to sit in the British House of Commons was an American woman, Lady Astor, who in November, 1919, was elected for the Sutton Division of Plymouth at a by-election, when her husband, who had been the member for the division, succeeded to the title of Lord Astor, with a seat m the House of Lords. But nearly three years before Lady Astor took her seat in the House of Commons, the American Federal House of Representatives welcomed its first woman member in the person of Jeanette Rankin, a Republican; who was elected for the State of Montana, and sat in the sixty-fifth Congress from March 4, 1917, to March 3, 1919. An interval of nearly fifteen years took place between the election of Mrs. Rankin to the Federal House of Representatives, and the election of a woman to the Federal Senate. This woman senator was Mrs. Hattie VV. Caraway, of Jonesbro, Arkansas, who in January, 1932, was elected for that State to the vacancy in the Senate caused by the death of her husband, Senator Thaddeus H. Caraway. In the following year the House of Representatives for the State of ■ North Dakota made a further advance in the emanciptation of women by electing Mrs. Minnie D. Craig as its Speaker. PIONEERS OF PROGRESS. In "Famous First Facts," Mr. Joseph Nathan Kane,gives some interesting facts' about the success of American women in breaking down the barricades erected against them in the fight for equality,of the, sexes. The first woman Associate Justice of a State Supreme Court was Florence Ellmwood Allen, of Cleveland/Ohio, who was elected in 1922 to the Ohio Supreme Court. Previous to securing this position, she was a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas in ; the County of Cuyahoga, Cleveland,'•: and in that capacity v/as the first woman occupant of the judicial bench to sentence a man to death. A prisoner named Frank Motto,' who was charged with murder in the first'degree, was convicted, and she ' formkliy .sentenced him to death by electrocution. The sentence was carried out ■'■'_, 'More than fifty years before. Miss Allen became a Judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio, Arabella A. Mansfield, of Mount Pleasant, lowa,* achieved the distinction of being the first American women to,be admitted to practise law. This was in June, 1869. Four years later Belva Ann Bennett Lockwood was admitted to practise before the Supreme Court of the United States. But not until six years after Miss Allen begame a Judge of the' Supreme Court of Ohio was a woman appointed to a judicial post under,the Federal Government. In May, 1928, President Coolidge, appointed Geneveve Rose Cline wi. Associate Judge ■of the United States Customs Court of New York. ":-. FIRST WOMAN GOVERNOR. ' The first woman Goyerrior, of art American State.was Mrs. Nellie Tayloe Ross, who was elected Governor of Wyoming- for the. unexpired term of her husband, William Ross. She took up her, duties on January 5, 1925, and five days later Mrs. Marion A. Ferguson (known familiarly as "Ma" Ferguson) was inaugurated as Governor of Texas. The first woman Mayor in. America was Susanna Medbra Salter, who in May, 1887, was . elected Mayo.rot Argonia, Kansas; She was only twenty-. seven years of age at the time, me first woman diplomat to represent the United States In the,capacity of Minister was Mrs. Ruth Bryan .Owen, who in 1933 was appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Denmark. She is the eldest daughter of the late William Jennings. Bryan, who on three occasions was the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for the Presidential election. _ ~ . The first policewoman in the united States was Mrs. Marie Owen, . the widow of a patrolman. She was appointed in 1893 to the Detroit Bureau of Police. The first woman chief of police was Mrs. Dolly Spencer, who was appointed in, 1914 by the Mayor of Milford. The first woman appointed to the aerial police was Cora Sterling. She was only'twenty years of age when in December, 1934, she was appointed to the Seattle police force. The first woman aviator pilot on a-mail-cany-ing transport line was Miss Helen Richey, who flew from Washington to Detroit on December 31, 1934 thereby becoming the first airwoman to fly the air mail on a regular , schedule. The trip occupies five hours each way with stops at Pittsburg and Cleveland. She flies a machine capable of carrying twelve passengers, which, when fully loaded, weighs seven tons. -