The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1918-07-12
SHALL WOMEN
 BE ECONSCRIPTED?
(BY MAX PEMBERroN)


 This is a. controversy of momentous import, and for women the supreme | question of the hour.
 Inevitably it has followed upon the | conscription of the middle-aged men. The doubt that broods over many a | home concerning the destiny of the man has come also to concern women. At luncheon tables, where formerly | they discussed a hundred trivial | things of folly and fashion, only one is discussed today: Are women to be l conscripted or are they not? We are told of frivolous girls who are totally unaware of the existence | of Armageddon. We are assured that there are thousands of young. unmar- ried women throughout the kingdom who are doing nothing for their country in this greatest hour of its fate We hear of the countess daugh- | ter who shirks every kind of war work, and of the parsons offspring who are | playing tennis.
 Therefore, it is urged that women should be conscripted. They are to be marshalled before the doctors and to be graded like the men. The phys | gardless of their temperament; the unfit are to be set to the canteen or the needle.
 | The suggestion was inevitable, yet those who make it can know very lit tie about the sex.
 It is one thing to conscript men. But when we come to women what we have to remember is the very different mentality with which we have to deal. ! Where is the manor woman eith-
 CT, for that matter-who could say with any sense of conviction that this | or that girl is a fit recruit for the lines | behind the lires? She may be of ap-
 parently excellent physique-a great
 tennis or golf player a strider about
 country lanes; yet a. doctor might find her highly strung to the last degree.
 While a burglar would not alright her. she might tremble upon the ap-
 pearance of mouse.
 Il The majority of women are creat-
 ures of temperament, which is the an-
 tithesis of discipline. A French off
 cer has stated that the worst soldier is
 the man of temperament. What
 would he have said about an army of Parisiennes?
 We cannot estimate the physical qualities of women as we estimate
 those of man. Her education has not
 made for the things which now mat
 ter. She was not taught at school
 to fight her own battles. There was no female Horatio to hold the bridge
 in the brave days of old. Rather was this sort of thing, this rude and ready view of life, held up to her as a thing apart-as something which concern
 ed the mere brutalities of man. A Fatal Blunder.
 Even the girl of 1914 still fixes her
 eyes upon the goal of home and hus- , band rather than upon that of any dis
 tant adventure. Today she may or f she may not have the makings of a , good soldier; but conscription which f would draft her indiscriminately to
 the ranks would, in my judgment, be f fatal b1under.
 Then, again, there is the question of l calling. Nearly every man was , brought up to some trade or profes- : sion. When you conscript men and
 they are rejected for the battle line it is easy to indicate the road they best
 may tread. This man has driven mo- a tors; that fellow has milked cows. r. There are clerks who will swell the a bulging ranks of the bureaucrats; V smiths who can go to the forge; fine , fellows who understand the myster- :, les of ships.
 But women have not been so cata- G logued. There were certain profes-
 sions, of course, open to them-wo- " men doctors and nurses and clerks f but the great majority were still the " children of the home. They had no arts beyond those of the piano and the duster.
 r' If you go to them today and say # you must do this or that" you may o find them entirely unequipped for the
 task which you set them. Leave them
 to themselves.