male employers, too old to fight, but never too old to “bully,” have occasionally made things uncomfortable for them by coarse words and coarser actions, they have held their peace for the sake of their men at the front, and are content to bear with insolence and insult in silence rather than interrupt the routine of the work they have undertaken in order to “release” the men, such “release” often meaning for themselves sheer heart-break and desolation. Oh, yes!--we are having “the time of our lives”!--a time such as this world never saw, and which we all pray it may never see again!--a time when wives toil in munition works to “release” their husbands, knowing that such “release” may mean their own widowhood--when mothers part bravely from their sons, conscious that they are going into such a hell of barbarous slaughter as never was known even in the days of the Roman butcher, Nero--when girls “release” their lovers, and bend their own slight bodies to the heavy toil usually undertaken by the physically stronger sex, and say nothing of their own fatigue, suspense, and sorrow! There are thousands of such splendid women to set against the few hundreds who “dine at restaurants” and “peacock about,” and even these latter are not so abandoned to self and vainglory as they seem. True, there are women who push their own ends under cover of professing charity, and are never so happy as when they see their own portraits in the lower grade press--this class has always existed in every country and will no doubt continue to exist. And there are plenty of female “decoys” for men “on leave”--who dine and dance at public restaurants in _un_-dress that would disgrace a savage; but, again, these have always existed, and will probably continue to exist. The good Bishop of London seems to have only just discovered them, which is a great testimony to his guilelessness. Then there is a particularly unfortunate section of the pictorial press which seeks to attract the public eye by indecent pictures of half-nude “women of the town”--dancers, actresses, and titled dames who are equally at one in a voluntary outrage of morals and modesty, and though the public Censor might very well put a stop to these offensive illustrations, he is apparently one of those “blind who will not see.” But you, our sisters in America, do see, and rashly pass judgment accordingly! Then there are the ridiculous fashion-plates used as advertisements in newspapers and in the catalogues of leading drapers, which represent women as the merest caricaturess of womanhood, looking more like cockatoos and chimpanzees than feminine humanity, in costumes presented as “the fashion,” but which no decent woman ever dreams of wearing. All this is “the scum of the pot” which rises to the top, thereby becoming noticeable--but it does not represent the actual Womanhood of Britain--the great, Silent Force of patient, brave, unwearying workers.