The Alaska daily empire., 1915-06-14

NI Lltlll, lAOAN .tst 4 IAftA A
 
 parenHy aeeaa to forbid lhe citizous ] to commit anch an act
 WOMEN IN WAR
 (London Anawer)
 VIII Germany arm her women, thereby doubling. or very nearly 30, her effective fighting force.
 The question Co us may sound su. nerfluous, absurd oven Yet it is be-. ] ing dlaeussed, and seriously discussed lin Berlin. where already above 10000 young girls between the ages Of 20 and 30 have formed themselves into rifle club and volunteered to fight l # need be, in defense of their Father Hand.
 Under modern conditions of warfare of course, the thing is quite feasible. Barring exceptional eases here and there, women did not march forth to war in the olden days because they lacked the necessary physical strength lThe average woman, for instance, could not swing Q battleaxe, or bend the tough yewhow our yoeman arch CTS delighted in Still less could she wear armor, or wield the heavy lance of mediayael times.
 Tn those days hand.to-hand fighting was the rule. instead Of the exception 1t now is. The result of battle de- pended largely upon the outcome of a series of single combats between man and man or between small isolated bodies of men. The strongest won; | tho weakest was oyerpowered and inc mediately killed or routed.
 All this is now altered. Battles arc fought and won often without the opposing forces coming into contact with one another. This being SO. there is no real reason, as has already been intmated, why women should not bel trained to war equally with men
 The modern small-bore rifle posses ses comparatively little recoil, 30 that she could learn to shoot straight with it quite as well as any man. Numbers of women. indeed, have already done SO. and that not only In Germany but here in England in France and else where.
 It has been objected that women soldiers could not stand Che physical strain involved in marching long dis. tances. and day after day, but this remains to be proved. And in any case. marching has been reduced to minimum nowadays SO far as re- gards campaigning in socailed civil ized countries
 In the present war for instance theI bulk of the combatants on both sides are being taken to the front my train and motor transport and turning movements are being executed and re-inforcements hurried them rom one part of the far-flung battle line to the other by means of the same agencies,
 True. there is the question of hand- to-hand lighting with the bayonet. It may well be doubted whether the physical strength and endurance ofI women would be aQual speaking gen.I erally to the task of crossing steel in a rough and tumble fight with any thing like an equal number of male enemies.
 But boyonet charges. although de- scrlptions of them naturally bulk big in accounts sent home from the front by newspaper correspondents and oth- CTS. are comparatively infrequent.
 It has been abundantly proved too, by our officers during the present conflict that the automatic magazine pistol is at least as deadly and eff fective weapon at close quarters as is the bayonet. And woman can shoot as quickly and as well with a magazine pistol as a man can, proyid- ed she retains her nerve, and has been previously trained in its use.
 Finally, as regards the quality of courage. without which, of course, mol soldier of either sex is worth his -or her-aalt, it is being more and more clearly recognized nowadays that wo- men possess this very desirable attri- bute equally with man.
 You do not believe itl Then ask the French soldiers who fought in Dahom ey in 1892 against King Benhazzin's amazons, celibate female warriors trained to battle from childhood.
 They will tell you-and it is mat ter of history also-that these women soldiers fought and died where they stood, after Che regiments that were composed of men only had broken and fled in disorder
 And did not the women Of gallant llitue Wales-several hundreds of tme clad in the national costume of red mantels and beaver hats-march forth to battle alongside their hns- bands and brothers that time the French landed at Fishguard no long CT ago than the year 1797.