WOMEN FIGHTERS.

Colonist, Volume LVII, Issue 13731, 20 March 1915, Page 2

WOMEN FIGHTERS.

It is now established beyond dispute that a number of women are fighting on both sides on the campaign in Rus- i sian Poland. Some interesting in-. stances of Russia amazons have already been recounted in "The Age," and further cases have been brought forward by the British official war correspondent who has been allowed by the Russian commander-in-chief to accompany the Russian troops to the front. Several of the Russian newspapers have lately given details of the discoverj' of German women fighting in the German ranks as volunteers. Among the women at present being treated in a Russian hospital there are seven women who were captured while fighting in German uniform. They were placed together in a special ward. They are fine specimens of Teutonic womanhood, and the Russian nurses admire their finely-developed muscles, which seem to indicate that they have belonged for srears5 rears to German gymnastic societies. They display to their captors the same haxight.y and contemptoous indifference which characterises Pnissian officers. One of the nurses offered one of them a Russian newspaper printed in German, but the patient indignantly tossed the paper aside, declaring that she wouldn't believe anything that appeared in a Russian newspaper, even if it were printed in German. Although these women refuse to disclose anything about themselves or hotv they came to be in the fighting line, it is judged that they come from the upper middle class. It is believed that they belong to some German suffragette movement, and are seeking to prove the German woman's claims to political suffrage by fighting on ' the field of battle. One of them died from her wounds shortly after her admission to the hospital.