Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1910-04-27

lives in order to secure freedom and
liberty for their people. In the One
Hundred Years War Joan of Arc was
the principal figure. In ouT own
Revolutionary days the women bore
no small part Of the brunt of the
struggle; Few it is true rose to
eminence by their deeds. yet the great
mass stood loyalty, unquestionably,
and dauntlessly behind the men who
fought in those dreary campaigns.
Russia is to day agitated by a
mighty revolution and nowhere have
the women played more important
part than they are playing at the
present time in this great revoIu-
tionary movement. Their object is
not to prepetuate national hostility.
but it is higher, nobler, and purer
purpose. to gain liberty and freedom
for the Russian empire
One of the most remarkable things
in the revolutionary movement in
Russia is the degree of devotion and
conservation of some of the young
women and giIls of the military
organization to the cause of freedom,
There are many women throughout
the Russian empire who consider
themselves just plain girls of the
revolution working for the cause of
freedom = And yet how thrilling and
how inspiring are The lives they lead,
how far outreaching the work they
do. The seriousness and earnestness
of purpose which inspires these
women, the inevitable result of the
sternness of a period Of revolution.
is shown in their deeds.
The development of woman as a
political factor has been parallel with
her intellectual development Forty
years ago the government which has
always regarded education as the chief
enemy of antocracy was hostile to the
spread of intelligence among women.
But now the desire for liberty was at
it's hopeful youth. the period was one
of profound intellectual and political
stirring. The young woman caught
the inspiration that was every where
and she began her long struggle for
intellectual liberty followed by her
attempt to awaken the mass.
The Russian woman teaches love of
liberty to stealthily gathered groupes
of working men and peasants, always
in constant danger Of being sent to
the great ice prison beyond the Arctic
Circle or to the Siberian mine. She
does not fear death or exile, and does
not long for peace and happiness be-
cause she thinks 1T is wrong for her
to think of herself as long as the
people are suffering.
In these great struggles daughters
of wealthy aristocrats, who control a
large share of the government and
who themselves refuse to aid the
masses in the struggle for liberty,
leave their opposing parents and
homes of plenty in order that they
may obtain an education. They live
lives of poverty that they may aid
the poor by securing liberty for them.
Believing that political liberty can
be obtained only by educating the
masses who have been kept in
ignorance, these young girls of
aristocratic birth 60 among the un-
educated class toiling from twelve to
sixteen hours daily in order to be
placed on an equal basis with the
people they are trying to educate.
At our distance from Russia the
woman revolutionist who stands out
most distinctly is the woman who
throws the bomb; but this is not the
greatest work. The greatest work is
educational, implanting in the people
knowledge of better conditions else
where. and then rousing in them an
unquenched determination to secure
better conditions for themselves.
Political spies continually hunt
these women down and send them to
Siberia, that glim and sinister land
of exile lying beyond the Ural
Mountains, where scores and even
hunrdeds of promising girls, loved
wives, and fond mothers are swal-
lowed up week after week. But the
places they are snatched from are
quickly filled by others equally eager
to share in bearing the burden of the
day. in the struggle toward freedom.
The ca gerness for gaining freedom
was in one instance shown when a
group of women gathered at a meet
ing held by the members of a strike.
They were commanded by officers to
leave but they refused to go. Filled
with the spirit of liberty they took up
their babes in their arms, opened their
garments, and kneeling before the
officers told them to shoot as they re-
fused TO 90