Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: mm THE WOMEN ARE SPLENDID1 Woman's part in the war; not the tender nursing part—that was expected by all—but the great share she is taking in what was once man's work is one of the great surprises. There is just a note of wounded vanity in the confessions of thousands of men who have to admit to-day that, unknown to themselves, they have been performing tasks which are now proved to have been women's work. Across the Channel, in France, women have always successfully managed large businesses. There is a large number of cases in point: Mme. Pommery, whose champagne sparkles around the world; Mme. Du- val, who organised the popular restaurants that were the forerunners of so many in London; Mme. Paquin, who succeeded her husband in the great modiste business; Mme. Curie, who discovered radium. Women play a prominent part in French politics, French business, French science, French agriculture, and in French affairs generally. 1 This article was among the first to call attention to the great part played by women in the effective waging of war. Throughout the English-speaking world we have always prided ourselves on sheltering our womenkind. We have not, for example, cared to see them working in the fields and at the heavier forms of manual labour. There has been a great deal of self-deception about it, because, after all, women have performed heavy tasks in factories for a century or more. And we must not forget our old friends, the chainmakers of Cradley Heath. Again, from the days of Florence Nightingale, the noble work of nursing our sick and carrying on the service of our hospitals has been to an increasing extent in the hands of women. In no field have they displayed a higher competence, a more sublime devotion; and few indeed are they who have not at some time ...