New Britain herald., 1915-08-06
English Women Bear Burden of
 <> War Heroically, Says Elsie Janis
No Tears Shed and Very Lit tile Mourning When News
 Reaches Them that Their Loved Ones Have A Fallen on Field of Battle


 Elsie Janis Is< back% from the war At least she is back from London and a year of playing to ho1ne-oh- week-leave men from the Marnesand Ypres, and lately to allssortss pf*hos-' pitals, from Mrs. Binthorne;C Cavenss dish's rose satin upholsterea home for convalescent officers. (and+ .pmcerss only), to the regulaY hospitaas foE.. foE.. the fellows you\ never heard of sinaths. old days, pasty> fellows fromaxd own Old Ford road way ,or5 ggeene egaWka from Sheffield -< '
 Elsie Janis is. backyard m ethe -waras not with any highbroWs sem1sscientihc speculations as to the status of Wom ' en or the probable rigldlty or gov ernments in the future and g. lot or all that" but story here and a story there of the England that, she loves and left in war time
 "Queer," she says, "one's expected to talk about the war. Nobody's said anything but war to me since l stepped off the gangplank> In Lon don, now, it used to be exactly the other way Why mention the war?'
 Women Game Straight Through.
 She slipped into talking about the English women
 Game" she said, absolutely game. And silent always. No tears, and very little mourning. They lose their hus- bands, their sons, and they never tell you; you have to find out. I like the way they take things, jokes and si- lence, according to the tradition of the honorable way for a Britisher to bear sorrow.
 occasionally a mother will show you, never crying but heart breaking just the same, some bit of a last let ter. I remember one woman and a bit from her sons letter written the day before he was shot. It's better to go out with a good crowd, mother. than to stay behind with outsiders Game all the way.
 Sailed Under Sealed Orders.
 "So many things happen quietly over there. We didn't hear anything, and then suddenly, without goodbys even to their mother, the next news was of a British army one hundred thousand strong in France. The men had sailed under sealed orders and
 
 They can say all they want against Kitchener, but man who can ooze a hundred thousand men across the Channel, just like that is pretty big.
 Pinked Checked Boys Stiffen Up
 And you ought to see his army. The crack regiments, the Grenadiers and the Coldstream Guards and those, the Nut regiments of good old boys about the town will most of them never come back, for they went out early and the first battle of Ypres came hard. But the new army is full of pink checked boys. You look at them and you get a sort of sea of blue eyes, pink cheeks and khaki, fresh as anything, but funny
 II used to sing to some of them in Richmond Park, where they draft the Queens Westminster Reserves. Cheer full kids. Straight as anything. It does you good to see the stiffening it has put into them all. Why, the callboys and ushcrs at the theater we used to know two years ago, fun- i ny about the shoulders and all for cigarettes, used to turn up every now 1 and again in khiki and you couldn't recognize them for the sort of none too-goods they used to be.
 "Chorus-Let's All Join In!''
 In the afternoons I used to sing in the hospitals. It was what I could do No use my trying to nurse, for l turn a flip at blood But to sing to three or four hundred men in their navy blue hospital robes with crirn- son ties-no house in the world was ever so appreciative! They used to ! sing I want to Go Back to Michi- gan with me until the roof rose, and ] if they couldn't sing they took it out 1 by coming in double strong on the i part where we shout in plain talk l Nevertheless The ones that were i up used to crowd round, and the