The officials' wives have shown the same splendid daring. Many of them are young married women with babies. They hurried to Berlin with their husbands to visit with them a day or two before the men should be called into active service. They were seen walking with them unter den Linden, or dining with them in restaurants. They talked of everything but war, and when the time came to say goodbye they hurried to the trains and bade them goodbye, as though they were only going on a short trip. The families in need of support, while husbands and brothers are gone, have found much protection in daughters and sisters. Thousands have taken up men's work in the cities and in the country. They are working long hours to fill the gaps in banks, postoffices and railroads. Most of the drygoods stores turned over the positions in the family to a wife or daughter so that the family may not need. Even girls offered themselves as conductors and motormen on street cars. They proved themselves competent for conductors, but they found the work of motorman too strenuous. The women on the farms have been working long hours for their children, sometimes weakening under their load to bring in the rich harvest. Though the Belgian men showed that they had splendid courage in fighting for their principle of neutrality, the real heroines were their women. In more combats than one, when they saw their men worsted, they seized the guns and swords strewn on the battlefields and even fought in hand combats with their enemies and would not give up even when worsted. When their houses and towns were on fire they refused to retreat. The consort of the king of Belgium, though she has three little children of her own, has given a large part of her private fortune and most of her time trying to provide her people with food and shelter. Though Holland was the first to mobilize when war was declared. Queen Wilhelmina insisted, through her ministers, that her country was to keep perfect neutrality. This she has reiterated time and again. As she says, "Not that I have so much fear for the horrors of war, but I do not wish to see my women and children suffer the hardships resulting from war."