With the French in France and SalonikaDavis, Richard Harding
History
With the French in France and Salonika
Davis, Richard Harding
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
A year ago the only women in London in uniform were the nurses. Now so
many are in uniform that to one visitor they presented the most
surprising change the war has brought to that city. Those who live in
London, to whom the change has come gradually, are probably hardly aware
how significant it is. Few people, certainly few men, guessed that so
many positions that before the war were open only to men, could be
filled quite as acceptably by women. Only the comic papers guessed it.
All that they ever mocked at, all the suffragettes and "equal rights"
women ever hoped for seems to have come true. Even women policemen.
True, they do not take the place of the real, immortal London bobby,
neither do the "special constables," but if a young girl is out late at
night with her young man in khaki, she is held up by a policewoman and
sent home. And her young man in khaki dare not resist.
In Paris, when the place of a man who had been mobilized was taken by
his wife, sister, or daughter, no one was surprised. Frenchwomen have
for years worked in partnership with men to a degree unknown in England.
They helped as bookkeepers, shopkeepers; in the restaurant they always
handled the money; in the theatres the ushers and box openers were
women; the government tobacco-shops were run by women. That Frenchwomen
were capable, efficient, hard working was as trite a saying as that the
Japanese are a wonderful little people. So when the men went to the
front and the women carried on their work, they were only proving a
proverb.
But in England careers for women, outside those of governess, typist,
barmaid, or show girl, which entailed marrying a marquis, were as few as
votes. The war has changed that. It gave woman her chance, and she
jumped at it. "When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again" he will find he
must look for a man's job, and that men's jobs no longer are sinecures.
In his absence women have found out, and, what is more important, the
employers have found out that to open a carriage door and hold an
umbrella over a customer is not necessarily a man's job. The man will
have to look for a position his sister cannot fill, and, judging from
the present aspect of London, those positions are rapidly disappearing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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