The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1918-03-02

For eighteen days 1 was quartered in the first
line of trenches with $500 of these Russian women
warriors. l studied them at close quarters-there
are no more intrepid soldiers in all this world than
were those women of a divided and bewildered
nation.
The Battalion of Death is no more. They were
wiped out by German shells and German bayonets,
and only four wounded survivors remain of 200
VINO Fought through hell fire to shame the men of
Russia into a sense of patriotic duty. To lack Of
training and of officers is ascribed the humiliation
OF this hrst battalion Of women warriors in the
modern world. They failed in their object-the
stimulating of compatriots to defense of their
country.
mat free Russia fears the power of women is
indicated by the fact that those who were connect
ed with the imperial circle of the former court are
conhned in the prison of Peter and Paul, guarded
by barriers of water as well as by walls of stone,
While minor offenders have been banished from
Petrograd.
The Russian woman warrior is the product of
outdoor life and simple, wholesome food. In the
ranks one finds the majority of soldiers from the
upper class of Russian society, and by their sides
are serfs and peasants accustomed to working in
the fields of Siberia and Russia with the men of
their households.
Ladies' of Russia are noted for their nrofciencv
In outdoor games and sports they are great walk
ers, skaters, horseback riders and devotees TO
Shedding, games that require vigor and furnish ex-
citement, and to their summer and winter carni-
walls and pageants, which occur several times a
year. At these times it is their pleasure to in
dulge in native folk dances, and dancing on the
ice is a pastime to which they are devoted, and to
which, l believe, they owe much of their muscular
development and rapidity and ease of action. The
life of the Russian woman has bred her to wars
service; she does not care for afternoon teas or
any form of indoor amusement during the daytime.
Instead you will find her engaged in active sports
on the frozen Neva, beside the trolley tracks that
link icebound towns in a chain Of gay activity,
even more bustling than when boats ply the river
in summer and fetch and carry between Russia's
capital and the Nevas outlying villages.
And now you will find women at the switches
along the shining miles of ice-foored single track
of the Neva's winter trolley lines.
In singular contrast to the sturdy, muscular build
Of Russian women, stocky of form and short of
stature, are Russian men of the upper class, who,
when they acquire refinement and high-breeding,
seem, also, to become weak and effeminate.
Not only In trench work, but in the ordinary avo-
cations of men one now finds Russian women.
Street-car conductors and mOtorwomen handle the
traffic with efficiency. Conductors call out the
streets, and from the second belt on the mans coat
that tops their blue skirts, they draw checks of
varying colors and hand them out In receipt of
fares. These colOrs represent from one TO five
fares, and also indicate the distance a passenger
expects to travel. One fare now costs fifteen ko-
pecks, or two and a half cents. Under ordinary
conditions fifteen kopecks were worth five cents.
But two and a half cents is a lot of money in Rus
STA today. On the other hand, while women fill
places on railroads and street cars, there are still
to be found many men driving motortrucks.
Another avocation of women is the driving of
draskeys-Russian dumpcarts-a fiat, two-wheeled
wagon drawn by one or two horses. In the latter
case one horse is always harnessed outside the
shafts, leaving the burden to be borne by the ami
NAL inside of them.
This peculiar method of Harvesting is even car
ried out in ambulances at the front. and a wound
ed man transported In this fashion usually has the
life bounced out of him on his way to the hospital.
Sometimes, indeed, such makeshift ambulances are
drawn by men, for life is accounted so cheap in
Russia that the Russian will not use horses when
men can serve the purpose Of draft animals.
Not only men, but women, take the place of
horses. They often draw their field kitchens
about, and bivouac to cook their good bread. made
of wheat and rye flour; their soup, horse meat and
vegetables. Russian horse meat is not half bad,
and that is their principal army meat. Horses are
plentiful, but very small, and they do not furnish
much haef, so that numbers are slaughtered to