WOMEN OF BRITAIN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 May 1941, Page 5

WOMEN OF BRITAIN

AMONG THE GREAT SOLDIERS OF THIS WAR FEDERAL PRIME MINISTER IMPRESSED. ' BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, May 4. The Australian Prime Minister. Mr Menzies, is expected to arrive in America tomorrow night. Before leaving Britain he recorded some of his impressions, and he said that among the people and things that impressed him. most were: Mr Winston Churchill, the resolute and supreme British fighting spirit, the craft of the Royal. Air Force, the boys in blue uniforms' flying among the clouds or groping in the dark for the invading bombers, the factories with their wounded roofs and walls and battered homes around them roaring out their busy answer to the enemy, but above all the courage, the action and the endurance of the British women. “They are among the great soldiers of this war,'' he said. "Is it possible to believe that not long ago we called them the weaker sex? When this war came with all its stupendous demands on man-power what did we find? Women conducting . vast organisations; women in the uniform of the Navy, Army, or Air Force; women at the fire brigade stations in blue overalls, always ready; women driving great vehicles; women digging in the fields: women wielding hammers and riveters in factories; women at the gentle work of nursing sick soldiers; women working in hospitals in the middle of air raids; women doing their turn of fire watching in their own suburban streets as incendiary bombs rain; and last, but not least, that forgotten but splendid woman, the housewife, who copes with rationing. “The vast movement of women into the service of the nation, doing these things and a hundred others, is spectacular. It marks the beginning of a new era.”