Everything in Russia begins with a proclamation. The women soldiers fired three verbal volleys before they even saw their first round of ammunition. The first was an appeal to Russian women. “Come with us in the name of your fallen heroes,” they said. “Come with us to dry the tears and heal the wounds of Russia. Protect her with your lives.” To the soldier they said: “Our hearts are about to give up their last hope. We weak women are turning into very tigresses to protect our children from a shameful yoke--to protect the freedom of our country. Woe unto you when we shall look upon you with contempt!” To the deserters they said: “Wake up and see clear, you who are selling the bread of your children to the Germans. Soon, very soon, you will prefer to face ten German bayonets to one tigress. We pour out our maledictions upon you. Enough of words! It is time to take to arms. Only with a storm of fire will we sweep the enemy off Russian soil. Only with bayonets will we obtain a permanent peace. Forward against the enemy! We go to die with you!” Equipped as infantry, fully armed, rolled blanket-coats swung across their shoulders, the first woman’s regiment in the world left Petrograd. At their head was Bachkarova, the peasant. Beside her marched Marya Skridlova, the aristocrat, aide-de-camp, tall and patrician, daughter of a famous Russian admiral and Minister of Marine. Bearing the banner of white and gold came Orlova, big and strong, head erect, and deep, serious gray eyes looking straight ahead at a vision in which the cheering multitudes in the streets of Petrograd played no part. Orlova’s eyes were fixed on death. She wanted to die for Holy Russia. She had her wish. Three weeks later she carried her colors into battle, and fell before the first shell that broke across the German line. Destiny permitted that for the better part of a week I might share the wooden boards and soup and _kasha_ of these soldier women. Late on a dreary, rainy night, I dropped off a troop-train at the military station of Malodetchna, and prepared to wait for dawn to show me the way to the headquarters of the Women’s Battalion. I had that day plowed through miles of trenches, with the red mud oozing over my shoe-tops, and I was taking into barracks with me some recently acquired and very definite impressions of the horrors of war. Many times in the days that followed, as I came to terms of friendship with one and another of these soldier girls, I thought of the line of barbed wire bounding No Man’s Land, and of the German steel waiting behind to sink itself into the soft, warm flesh of my companions. More often still, I shuddered at the idea that these girls with big eyes and clear open hearts were going out to kill; for I was among those whose pigeonholes held a fond faith in the coming of the day when women would bear neither arms nor soldiers, but a race of human beings gifted with the fine art of living together in peace and amity.