The military mobilization of Germany was no more immediate and effective than the call to arms for women. On August 1, 1914, the summons went out, and German women were at once part of the smooth running machine of efficiency.

The world says the Kaiser has been preparing for war for forty years. The world means that he has been preparing the fighting force. The sword and guns were to be ready. But the military arm of the nation, the German government believes, is but the first line of attack; the people are the second line, and so they, too, in all their life activities, were not forgotten. The military aristocracy has never neglected the function of women in the state. The definition of their function may differ from ours, but that there is a function is recognized, and it is related to the other vital social organs.

Slowly, through the last half of the nineteenth century, there had grown up clubs among German women focusing on a definite bit of work, or crystallizing about an idea. Germany even had suffrage societies. Politics, however, were forbidden by the government; women were not allowed to hang on the fringe of a meeting held to discuss men's politics. But the women of the Fatherland were free to pool their ideas in philanthropic and hygienic corners, and venture out at times on educational highways. The Froebel societies had many a contest with the government, for to the military mind, the gentle pedagogue's theories seemed subversive of discipline as enforced by spurs and bayonets.

These clubs, covering every trade and profession, every duty and every aspiration of women, were dotted over the German Empire. At last they drew together in a federation. The government looked on. It saw a machine created, and believing in thorough organization, no doubt gave thought to the possibilities of the Bund deutscher, Frauenvereine. At the outbreak of war, Dr. Gertrud Baumer was president of the Bund. She was a leader of great ability, marshalling half a million of women. No other organization was so widespread and well-knit, except perhaps Der Vaterlandische Frauenverein with its two thousand one hundred and fifty branches. It was evangelical and military. The Empress was its patron. Its popular name is the "ArmÉe der Kaiserin."

There the two great national societies stood--one aristocratic, the other democratic, one appealing to the ruling class, the other holding in bonds of fellowship the rich and the poor, the urban and the rural, the professional and the industrial woman.

Every belligerent president or premier has faced exactly the same perplexity. What woman, what society, is to be recognized as leader? The question has brought beads of perspiration to the foreheads of statesmen.

France solved the difficulty urbanely. It said "yes" to each and all. It promised coÖperation and kept the promise. By affably--always affably and hospitably--accepting this service from one society, and suggesting another pressing need to its competitor, it sorted out capabilities, and warded off duplication. Perhaps this did not bring the fullest efficiency, but the loss was more than made up, no doubt, by a free field for initiative. Britain ignored all existing organizations of women, and after a year and a half of puzzlement created a separate government department for their mobilization. America struck out still another course. It took the heads of several national societies, bound them in one committee, to which it gave, perhaps with the idea of avoiding any danger of friction, neither power nor funds.

Germany faced the same critical moment for decision. The government wanted efficient use of woman-power on the land, in the factory, in the home, and that quickly. It made use of the best existing machinery. Dr. Gertrud Baumer visited the Ministerium des Innern, and on August 1 she issued a call for the mobilization of women for service to the Fatherland in the Nationale Frauendienst. Under the aegis of the government, with the national treasury behind her, Dr. Baumer summoned the women of the Empire. By order, every woman and every organization of women was to fall in line under the Frauendienst in each village and city for "the duration of the war."^[3]

In each army district, the government appointed a woman as directress, and by order to town and provincial authorities made the Frauendienst part of local executive affairs.

Among the immediate duties laid upon the Frauendienst by the authorities was the task of registering all needy persons, of providing cheap eating places, opening workrooms, and setting up nurseries for children, especially for those who were motherless and those whose fathers had fallen at the front and whose mothers were in some gainful pursuit. With these duties went the administrative service of coÖperating with the government in "keeping up an even supply of foodstuffs, and controlling the buying and selling of food."

Germany anticipated as did no other belligerent the unemployment which would follow a declaration of war, and prepared to meet the condition. A great deal of army work, such as tent sewing, belts for cartridges, bread sacks, and sheets for hospitals, was made immediately available for the women thrown out of luxury trades. In the first month of the war the Frauendienst opened work-rooms in all great centers; machinery was installed by magic and through the six work-rooms in Berlin alone twenty-three thousand women were given paid employment in one week.

Such efforts could not, of course, absorb the surplus labor, for unemployment was very great. Eighty percent of the women's hat-makers and milliners were out of work, seventy-two percent of the workers in glass and fifty-eight percent in china. The Frauendienst investigated two hundred and fifty-five thousand needy cases, and in Berlin alone found sixty thousand women who had lost their employment. Charity had to render help. Here, again, it is an example of the alertness of the organization and its close connection with the government that the Berlin magistracy deputed to twenty-three Hilfscommissionen from the Frauendienst the work of giving advice and charity relief to the unemployed. Knitting rooms were opened, clothing depots, mending rooms, where donated clothing was repaired, and in one month fifty-six thousand orders for milk, five hundred thousand for bread, and three hundred thousand for meals were distributed for the city authorities.

The adjustment to war requirements went on more quickly in Germany than in any other country. Before a year had passed the surplus hands had been absorbed, and a shortage of labor power was beginning to be felt.

And now opens the war drama set with the same scene everywhere. Women hurry forward to take up the burden laid down by men, and to assume the new occupations made necessary by the organization of the world for military conflict. To tell of Germany is merely to speak in bigger numbers. Women in munitions? Of course, well over the million mark. Trolley conductors? Of course, six hundred in Berlin alone before the first Christmas. Women are making the fuses, fashioning the big shells, and at the same heavy machines used by the men. That speaks volumes--the same heavy machines. Great Britain and France have in every case introduced lighter machinery for their women. But, whatever the conditions, in Germany the women are handling high explosives, sewing heavy saddlery, operating the heaviest drill machines. Women have been put on the "hardest jobs hitherto filled by men." In the German-Luxemburg Mining and Furnace Company at Differdingen, they are found doing work at the slag and blast furnaces which had always required men of great endurance. They work on the same shifts as the men, receive the same pay, but are not worked overtime "because they must go home and perform their domestic duties."

One feels the weight of the German system. Patient women shoulder double burdens. They always did.

In the Post and Telegraph department there is an army of fifty thousand women. The telephone service is entirely in their hands, and running more smoothly than formerly. Dr. KÄthe Schirmacher declares comfortingly in the Kriegsfrau that "one must not forget that these women know many important bits of information--and keep silent." Women have learned to keep a secret!

One hundred and eighty nurses, experts with the X-ray, were in the front line dressing stations in the early days of the war, and before a week of conflict had passed women were in the Field Post, and Frau Reimer, organizer of official chauffeurs, was on the western line of attack.

Agriculture claims more women than any occupation in Germany. They were always on the farm, perhaps they are happier there now since they themselves are in command. It is said that "the peasants work in the boots and trousers of their husbands and ride in the saddle." War has liberated German women from the collar and put them on horseback!

But strangest and most unexpected of all is the professional and administrative use of women. The government has sent women architects and interior decorators to East Prussia to plan and carry through reconstruction work. Over a hundred--to be exact, one hundred and sixteen at last accounts--have taken the places of men in administrative departments connected with the railways. Many widows who have shown capacity have been put in government positions of importance formerly held by their husbands. Women have become farm managers, superintendents of dairy industries, and representatives of landed proprietors.

The disseminating of all instruction and information for women on war economies was delegated to the League of Women's Domestic Science Clubs. The Berlin course was held in no less a place than the Abgeordnetenhaus, and the Herrenhaus opened its doors wide on Rural Women's Day when Agricultural Week was held at the capital.

When the full history of the war comes to be written, no doubt one reason for Germany's marvelous power to stand so long against the world will be found in her use of every brain and muscle of the nation. This has been for her no exclusive war. Her entire people to their last ounce of energy have been engaged.

And this supreme service on the part of German women seeks democratic expression. From them comes the clearest, bravest word that has reached us across the border. The most hopeful sign is this manifesto from the suffrage organizations to the government: "Up to the present Germany has stood in the lowest rank of nations as regards women's rights. In most civilized lands women already have been given a large share in public affairs. German women have been granted nothing except within the most insignificant limits. In New Zealand, Australia and most American States, and even before the war in Finland and Norway, they had been given political rights; to-day, Sweden, Russia and many other countries give them a full or limited franchise. The war has brought a full victory to the women of England, Canada, Russia and Denmark, and large concessions are within sight in France, Holland and Hungary.

"Among us Germans not only the national but even the commercial franchise is denied, and even a share in the industrial and commercial courts. In the demand for the democratization of German public life our legislators do not seem even to admit the existence of women.

"But during the war the cooperation of women in public life has unostentatiously grown from year to year until to-day the number of women engaged in various callings in Germany exceeds the number of men.

"The work they are doing includes all spheres of male activity; without them it would no longer be possible to support the economic life of the people. Women have done their full share in the work of the community.

"Does not this performance of duty involve the right to share in the building up and extension of the social order?

"The women protest against this lack of political rights, in virtue both of their work for the community and of their work as human beings. They demand political equality with men. They demand the direct, equal and secret franchise for all legislative bodies, full equality in the communes and in legal representation of their interests.

"This first joint pronouncement on women's demands will be followed by others until the victory of our cause is won."[3] "Die Frauenvereine jeder Stadt verbinden sich fÜr die Dauer des Krieges zur Organization Nationaler Frauendienst die zu Berlin am 1ten August begrÜndet wurde."