The Detroit Times

Why not women?
BY DR. FRANK CRANE
(Copyright, 1917, by Frank Crane)

The young men are going to camp and trench—a million or so of them. What are the corresponding million or so young women doing?
Why not use them? If not to drill and shoot, then to do something else equally necessary.
The day is past when women want to stay home, twiddle their thumbs, look pretty, "sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam," to be fought for, and simply be on hand to bind the laurel on the victor's brow.
The medieval days of do-less ladies who were only handsome pieces of baggage for knights to quarrel over are past.
Women are persons, individuals, citizens.
They have as much as men right to their share in national defense.
Nowadays firing guns on the front is the least part of war. The greater part is getting that gun ready, feeding the gunner, maintaining ships and railways to supply him, farms and factories to provide for him.
Back of the man who shoots must be ten persons who keep him fit.
Of these ten, at least five or six should be women.
It is not enough for women to knit wristlets, and sew kit-bags, and fold Red Cross bandages, and sing in bazaars, and organize this and that relief society. All this is trifling with a task that demands unstinted effort.
Draft the women.
Put them in uniforms.
Organize them as strictly as men, and under the same military discipline. And put them in factories, on trains, in offices, at secretarial and messenger work, anywhere that they can take the place of a husky man and release him for fighting.
And if we're not yet advanced enough, nor scared enough, to draft them, then at least give them a chance to volunteer.
Open the ranks of the army to women, to work in industrial lines at least, give them a chance to do their bit, and you will have a woman's army of five million before six months.
And it will be as devoted, enthusiastic, efficient an army as ever existed.
Give the women a chance—not to fiddle-faddle, but to do something.
The best backing for an army of men at the front would be an army of women at home.
Millions of women are clamoring for something to do.
Here is a well of patriotic force undeveloped, untapped, ready, eager.
Let us slough off our medieval notions.
Organize the women—not to fight—but to back up the fighters.
In the early days the women in the log fort stood by the men, reloading their rifles and gave them food and drink while they fought the savages.
Why not let them do likewise now?
The women knock at the army's door—let us admit them.