If the first battle of the first women soldiers in the world had been fought on American soil imagine what the newspapers would have made of the story. Especially if the women had gone into battle with the object of rallying a demoralized American army, and had succeeded in their object. And this is all the space Botchkareva’s victorious battalion was accorded in _Novoe Vremya_, one of the best newspapers in Russia. After describing briefly the engagement on the Smorgon-Krevo front, in which prisoners, guns and ammunition were taken, the account proceeded: “The women’s battalion made a counter attack, replacing deserters who ran away. This battalion captured almost a hundred prisoners including two officers. Botchkareva and Skridlova are wounded, the latter receiving contusions and shock from the explosion of a big shell. The battalion suffered some losses, but has won historic fame for the name of women. The best soldiers looked with consideration and esteem on their new fighting comrades, but the deserters were not touched by their example, and in this respect the aim was not reached. We must take care of these dear forces, and not give too much consideration to new formations of the kind.” If the press of Russia had been wise, the fact that some of the slackers in the army were not touched by the women’s bravery would have been made less conspicuous than the more important fact that many soldiers were touched by it, and that the Russian army was thereby enabled to win a victory. Instead of discouraging new formations, the press should have called for more and more regiments of women to lead the men. They should have kept it up until people got so excited over the tragedy of women being torn to pieces by German shot and shrapnel that they would have risen in wrath, taken hold of their army and their government, and created conditions which would relieve women from the dreadful necessity of fighting. It could have been done, the people were ready for it. They felt the tragedy. At a memorial service for the dead women, held in Kazan Cathedral the Sunday after the battle, the presiding priest said: “This is a terrible and yet a glorious hour for Russia. Sad it is, and terrible beyond expression that men have allowed women to die in their places for our unhappy country. But glorious it will ever be that Russian women have been ready and willing to do it.” After the service, a Bolshevik soldier, standing in front of the cathedral, tried to turn the sympathies of the crowd by making insulting remarks about the dead women. He did not have time to say much before a group of working women, with howls of rage, rushed him, and I believe would have killed him if his friends had not got him away.