WOMAN'S WORK IN WAR

Waikato Times, Volume 88, Issue 13488, 19 May 1917, Page 3 (Supplement)

WOMAN'S WORK IN WAR

Twenty years ago the Countess of Warwick attempted to anticipate the cry for woman's service on the land. But every development sought for man was taboo in the case of woman.. She might not defy conventions. Ladv Warwick's book, "Women and the "War," notes the progress of feminism and what it is meaning to English women. We quote: "To-day I see a great expansion of woman's labors under the sun. The trouble is that the demand outstrips the supply. The public, whose apathy hasigiven only a minimum of stimulus to the progress of the girl agriculturist, has become suddenly clamant. It demands the impossible. The girls' agricultural colleges are to improvise the highly trained, skilled article. It is as though they should demand the finished fruits of the orchard before the budding and flowering time of the trees has been fulfilled. I am hoping that this will notlead to a reaction, and that those whose demand for ready-made service brings inevitably unsatisfactory results will not regard woman's work in the light that their own thoughtlessness must shed en it. Only those of us who understand the curriculum, and the time required to follow it to the appointed end, knowthat you must be thorough if you would be successful. All the ordinary problems of the open-air life must be laced In training before they can be overcome in the practice of daily life in farm and garden. To us this is a commonplace; to those who do not know the land and its labor it seems as a surprise and an annovance.

An experiment is being made at Studley, where the countess now lives, in agricultural training for girls, the school being managed for experience and profit.

"Il our victory in the world-war is to have in it the elements of permanence, it can only be by the thorough equipment of those who go out into the world to contend with the most highly trained nation under the sun, and, as far as woman's education is concerned, in whatever aspect, it has the advantage denied to the education of boys—of being free from old and paralysing conventions. There is nothing that must he done merely because it has been done from time immemorial, and the agricultural colleges have been modern from their inception.

"The first thing to be considered is so to train the students that they are able gradually to develop a measure of physical strength, and at the same time to teach them how to obtain a maximum of result from a minimum of effort. Many an untrained man could only accomplish with great exertion what a trained woman can do without difficulty. In a little while not only do the spade" nud the wheelbarrow lose all their terrors, but the comparative light modern plough can bo handled, even on fairly heavy land, without excessive fatigue. Then the balance must be preserved between practice and theory. You will remember that the method of combining the two is not i new. Mr Vi'ackford Soueers taught" it iat Dotheliovs Hall. 'W-I-N-D-E-R, a Hafi|HMita V tiiyM^i y tfi n M