THE WOMAN'S PART.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11282, 9 January 1915, Page 5

THE WOMAN'S PART.

.* (" The Queen.") The battle of the Aisne is still going on. and every day the official communiques gh-e us to understand thatchings are going well for our arms. Word of mouth stories are brought in to us which corroborate the communiques, and twenty-five miles out of the city the heavy French cannons are to be heard doing their useful work. The sound of cannons in the distance, as one stands on a sunny hillside with fields of stubble and beetroot all round, orchards of ripe fruit and small grey stone cottages set in gay little gardens, is extraordinarily impressive. One draws a rapid mental contrast between the two scenes, and simultaneously one sees the lives of women and the lives of men in the same line of contrast. The men arts with the cannons, the women are working in a-nd around the cottages; the one existence is so wildly terrible that it is impossible for those who have never .seen battle to get more than a vague notion of what it is like: the other life, that of the women, is like a dream. -Mechanically everyone does the daily task, and with it as much of the man's task as possible; the work in the fields and gardens is going on in halting fashion, the children are fed and clothed, there is very little open lamentation, but even as the countryside misses the vigorous work of the men, so do the women miss their companionship. With the departure of their men, whether sons or husbands, the spring of life went out for the women, and although thev do not say so. the women of the villages', those who live on the very edge of the battlefields, those who have suffered at the hands of the enemy themselves, and have fleen their own villages destroyed by the enemy's fire, arc no longer buoyed up with the hope that those of their own whom they have .seen go will come back again. To them the war spells desolation, no matter if it brings victory or defeat. Yet they go on with their daily work as regularly as Nature goes on with hers, they " sow the seed and they withhold not their hand." and in their simple, uncomplaining way they are as sublime as Nature herself. One woman told us that when the Germans came to her village she was alone in her house, with one small child who wa« ill. She was the cheese and buttoi' maker of the district, and had a goodly store of both in her dairy, all of which the German officers ordered, her lo give up to them. She begged that thev would allow her to keep a, little butter for the child who was ill, and the answer tdw got was a revolver bold to her temple. She must give everything or die. On the other hand, a story is told of the mayor of a small town being ordered u> supply hundreds of kilos of bacon, and mi assuring the Gorman eoniimrider that the town could not produce w h:u. he wanted, a tax of lTo.OOOfrs. was levied and ordered to be paid at once. The money was found and handed over. Several days later the mayor of the, town was very Mirprised to receive a summons froru the, same German officer who had levied the tax to come and receive 100,000i'rs. as uo had only needed tho odd 7o,ooofrs!