RUSSIAN AMAZONS IN BATTLE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LI, Issue 175, 10 September 1917, Page 3

RUSSIAN AMAZONS IN BATTLE.

i AMERICAN SUFFRAGIST'S I INTERVIEW. ■SAX FRANC I SCO, Aug. L Any new departure in woman's realm alwa\s attracts wonderful attention in America, but nothing has equalled for many decades the interest invested in the heroic behaviour of Russia's women fighters charging fearlessly over a shellI torn field when their men comrades had deserted them in battle. A few hours prior to the closing of the mails in San Francisco for New Zealand there arrived a special cablegram from Petrograd in the 'Californian metropolis giving some illuminating details of the views of an American suffragist who had had the privilege of spending two week® at the front with the first, women fighters -who ever were attached to a modern army. This American suffragist was Rheto Child© Dorr, the wellknown newspaper woman, writer and advocate of female suffrage. Interviewed in Petrograd on her return from the battle lines, Miss Dorr said "Drilling daily through the rain and I mud, quartered no whit better than ] the ■ lowest peasant private, asking no favours but to fight on equal terms against the enemy, braving at first- the sneers of- the male fighters, Russian women in the "Legion of Death" have proved in the supreme test they have a place in the fighting line. "When I left. they had been demanding for many days that they be taken to the . fighting zone and dispatches have told of the splendid, heroism of the girl troops in 'their first action under fire. I spent two weeks with these girls peasants, intellectuals, doctors, stenoJ graphers. telephone operators, and plain frjris—jmd I am convinced there is a place for women in the fighting line,_ as a result of that Lea-vine Petrograd, we travelled in wooden bunks on regular trains. All along our journey, station platform crowds greeted us with ridicule. " 'Whv are you going to fight?' they would ieer. '"Because you men are cowards !* the girls would shout back. W e had a 40-hour trip t-o headquarters near Vilna. There we were conducted to long wooden huts, half buried in earth and with shelves for beds. Thou- ' sands of soldiers gathered to greet us. and their shouts reminded me of New , Yorkers watching a suffrage parade in the early davs when suffragists were taunted and "Tidiculed. On our very first night at the front we heard a tire*.t pounding on the door ■of the building. A Jewess challenged instantIv. 'Aren't there girls, here?' demanded a voice. 'Not- girls, but soldiers, the Jewess sternly "returned, 'and if you don't leave we will shoot.* The

disturber or disturbers went, too. "The next day the girls bathed in the river. Girl sentinels were stationed in a wide circle about the banks while a number of officers —all gentlemen—assisted in keeping away intruders. Itrained every day, but the girls drilled just the same. They lived just as the men did—except that Mme. Botchkoreva, the commander, was more strict than the men's commanders. The girls called her 'Mister Commander.' I as-k----cdi one of them why? 'Oh,' she replied, 'all military terms are masculine, and it is much too useless a work to go through the list feminising the nomenclature of war.' "It was natural manv men thought the girls were of evil intention. Bub their minds were vervi soon disabused. Many soldiers told the girls they would never be allowed to get to the fro"Vi beca.use th P Bolshevikis "would kill girl ficrhters. The 'Lesion of Death did receive a refusal of their request for service at the front from a meeting of Bolshevikis. the explanation being that superior officers felt the women had not been sufficiently trained. When word Anally did come thf.t the Legion was to be sent nearer the front, the girls' cheers and hurrahs lasted many minutes. "The women's X,egion of Death has overthrown every convention. The girls in it have forgotten everything they ver p ever taught as women —and you ve no idea how nice women can be when they are absolutelv natural and unselI fish The girls did their job in dead earnest. There was no nonsense. When there was skylarking, Mister ■C°™ _ mander Botrhkorea -used to shout: 'Don't be sillv ; you may be dead m five davs !' I never thought before that women ouerht to go to war. I am conthat in any countrv -under such conditions as those now facing the women ouerht to step into the breach, gun in hand. It is their country, a s much as the- men. s. —l r ess correspondent.