When Botchkareva’s Battalion of Death was formed Marie Skridlova determined to join it. Admiral Skridloff, veteran of two wars, iron old patriot, went with her to the women’s barracks and with his own hand enrolled her in the Russian army service. In the regiment of which this girl was adjutant I found six Red Cross nurses who were through with nursing and had gone out to die for their unhappy country. There was a woman doctor who had seen service in base hospitals. There were clerks and office women, factory girls, servants, farm women. Ten women had fought in men’s regiments. Every woman had her own story. I did not hear them all, but I heard many, each one a simple chronicle of suffering or bereavement, or shame over Russia’s plight. There was one girl of nineteen, a Cossack, a pretty, dark-eyed young thing, left absolutely adrift after the death in battle of her father and two brothers, and the still more tragic death of her mother when the Germans shelled the hospital where she was nursing. To her a place in Botchkareva’s regiment and a gun with which to defend herself spelled safety. “What was there left for me?” sighed a big Esthonian woman, showing me a photograph she wore constantly on her heart. It was a photograph of a lovely child of five years. “He died of want,” said the woman briefly. “His father is a prisoner somewhere in Austria.” There was a Japanese girl in the regiment, and when I asked her her reason for joining she smiled, and in the evenly polite tone that marks her race, replied: “There were so many reasons that I prefer not to tell any of them.” One twilight I came on this girl sitting outside with the little Polish Jewess with whom she bunked. The two sat perfectly motionless on a fallen tree, watching a group of soldiers gathered around a fire. In their silent gaze I read a malevolence, a reminiscence so full of concentrated loathing that I turned away with a shudder. I never asked another woman her reason for joining the regiment. I was afraid it might be more personal than patriotic. I do not believe, however, that this was the case with the majority. Mostly the women were in arms because they feared and dreaded the further demoralization of the troops, and they believed fervently that they could rally their men to fight. “Our men,” they said, “are suffering from a sickness of the soul. It is our duty to lead them back to health.” Every woman in the regiment had seen war face to face, had suffered bitterly through war, and finally had seen their men fail in the fight. They had beheld their men desert in time of war, the most dishonorable thing men can do, and they said, “Well then, there is nothing left except for us to go in their places.”