The Sword of Deborah

word "Ma'am" is always used by a Waac when speaking to another of superior rank, till you very nearly find yourself bobbing. Later this impres

n avoided with extraordinary dexterity; there is just enough ritual to make the girls feel they belong to an organised body, without the enemy being given occasion to blaspheme by saying that women like play

first the women wore the same badges as denote the ranks of soldiers, but a paternal-or should one not almost say maternal?-Government evidently thought t

the telephone between the Area Controller and various great ones of the earth who were frantically ringing up for cooks. Also a new Officers' Club for senior officers wanting a rest from the firing line is just being o

imosa set about the long mess tables, there is nothing of particular interest to describe. The point is that all the preparing and the serving of food in this great camp for officers and men is done by women and that all the male creatures are unreservedly jubilant at the change. The C.O. e

y are distinguished by a bronze laurel leaf and always have their own mess-room and sitting-room as distinct from the rest of the girls, but it is rather an influence than an authority whi

the cooking has been put aside, the rest is poured into great tins, graded according to its quality, and sent home

the scheme satisfactorily. Both these are thoroughly sound suggestions that may yet, let us hope, come to something, though they would be in a sense breaking new ground, as the idea of the Waacs is that they actually replace men. Each cook releases one man, whil

exchanged for a more valuable piece. She sends a fighting man to his job by taking on the jo

e effulgence of the spring light, making hundreds of points of brightness above the earth still brown and bare, that soon, under the gardeners' care, will blossom like the rose. Not a desert even now-for no place where fighters rest is a desert-but a place expectant, full of the promise of beauty to come, an outward

ry raised da?s of earth the bleached wood of the cross spreads its arms, throwing a shadow soft and blue like a dove's feather, a shadow that curves over the mound and laps down its edge lightly as a benison. On each cross is the little white me

eople break down and turn blindly, as people will for comfort, to the nearest sympathy, to the women gardeners who are showing them the grave they came to see. And a sudden note of that deep undercurrent which at times of stress always turns the mem

erent heartbreak-Do you suppose that they will ever again forget the aspect of those silent witnesses to the splendour and the unselfishness and the utter release from pettiness of the men who lie there? This is what it is to make good citizens, and