And this woman of war is the woman of work. As, in the brave days of old, woman, free of spirit as she was free of limb, carried the extra weapons of her mate into the heart of the conflict, and inspired him to superhuman deeds, bearing equal share with him in the front of battle, so the woman of to-day, for the first time in long generations given equal freedom with man to do the world's work, has sprung to the side of her mate. In the factories of England, in the fields of Russia, in the mills and mines of France, on the firing line itself, and in the Red Cross behind every bloody trench of the war-mad world, she is giving herself, body, mind, and soul, for the preservation of the institutions of her people. I have seen her pushing her cart through the streets of Rennes and Tours, bearing great loads down the highways of Brittany, tilling fields with the first glimpse of spring, close behind the lines. She is in all places, for her tasks are the tasks of the universal need. But England gave me my best opportunity to study carefully the woman of work. A girl sold me my ticket at Liverpool; another took it. A girl gathered the baggage together at the Paddington station in London. Young women were at the desk of the hotel--not a man in sight anywhere. Women are conductors on the London trams and guards as well as ticket-sellers in the tubes. I saw them doing the heaviest labor of canal-boats and harbor tugs. They were ploughing in the country and driving munition-vans in the cities. In one of the greatest shell-factories I saw scores of young women at lathes, and other scores managing intricate machinery with deftness and precision. What price the next generation will pay for these strained bodies--some of the loads are necessarily heavy ones--I do not know, but womanhood asks no questions when the voice of sacrifice calls. One is impressed by the number of wedding-rings worn by the women of work; thousands of wives, yes, and widows, of soldiers are serving Britain in these new ways. Many must add their earnings to the scant home store, and so the babies are cared for by grandparents or public nurseries while the mothers labor for the cause the father fights for or may have died for. In munition-factories matrons are provided who look after the interests of the younger girls. Of course, grave moral problems are arising from these new and complicated relations of women to the world that has for so long been man's world exclusively. These problems will not be solved in a day. After three years of war 4,766,000 women were employed in England, or 1,421,000 more than were employed in 1914. The number of women workers is increasing at the rate of 18,000 every week. The Minister of Munitions announces that from "sixty to eighty per cent of the machine work on shells, fuses, and trench-warfare supplies is now performed by women. They have been trained in aëroplane-manufacture, gun-work, and in almost every other branch of manufacture."