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Show Kathleen Norris Says: Women May Have to Be Regimented (Bell Syndicate WNU Service.) believe thai within six months every woman and girl in the United States will have to register. There will be training camps for officers and no more room for petty squabbles that threaten women's war work. By KATHLEEN NORRIS ALL American women -A want to help the coun- try now. Thousands are enlisting for service any service. Nursing, sewing, making bandages, canteen work, entertaining; whatever each one may do she is eager to do. But American women are not drafted. They are not obliged to register, state age and capability, and await the order to serve. That has been the procedure with men for generations. They expect to obey, take orders, work humbly hum-bly in the lowest ranks until they prove their right to promotion. pro-motion. Women volunteer eagerly enough. But presently they question the right of Mrs. Wilson to give orders; they don't know who ever told Mary Davis Da-vis that she was boss. They want a becoming uniform; and I have heard lately of many who would not report for duty until they got that uniform. When an emergency call came for certain others, who had taken nursing courses and suddenly sud-denly were needed, several answered an-swered that they had engagements or were playing bridge yes, the latter answer was actually given to the anxious superintendent who needed vital help to save life. A San Francisco paper had an editorial that is a reproach to every ev-ery woman in the state. It warned women volunteers that they must pull together, that they must stop fighting for places of power or prominence, prom-inence, that they must avoid duplication dupli-cation of service and concentration of help in certain popular areas. May Need Regimentation. Does that same condition exist among the women of your group or neighborhood? If so, and if it continues, the only answer is government regimentation regimenta-tion of women as well as men. When that comes, every woman will do what she is told to do. The women placed in authority over her may be infinitely less capable than she is herself, but she won't be allowed al-lowed to question orders or choose her own way of doing her own job. She will report where she is told to report, on the minute, and she will endure whatever conditions meet her without any redress. We are the greatest nation in the world. But we never have been a truculent nation, looking about for excuses to make trouble with our neighbors, and we have been rich enough to be content with the potentialities poten-tialities of our own magnificent land. Now that is changed. We must meet attack from without, and even if it takes us years to get our full fighting power organized there can be no turning back now and no halfway half-way measures. And unless our women can do their share without actual military regimentation, they must be prepared to be mobilized. Utmost Is Exacted. In every army there are, temporarily tempo-rarily at least, mistakes in command. com-mand. It would take a superhuman commander-in-chief always to delegate dele-gate authority to the right person. Fitness for office is a thing of slow growth, and time is the one thing we have not, just now. Nevertheless, Neverthe-less, in a few weeks or months the incompetent officer is moved to some less important command; there is a "hake-up," and gradually the utmost ut-most is exacted from a well-organised, tightly knit, well-controlled soldiery. WAR IS WORK American women are willing, will-ing, even eager, to volunteer for ivar service oj one kind or another. But after a little time many of them begin to question ques-tion the authority of those in command, to demand smartly tailored uniforms at the price of efficiency, to find it more convenient to plead a previous engagement when that inevitable inevi-table emergency call comes and finds them just "too tired?' to make the effort. War is work hard work -for everyone, every-one, and Kathleen Norris believes be-lieves that unless women voluntarily vol-untarily toe the mark, they will have to submit to the draft and to military regimentation. The bombs won't wait for you to finish that "rubber." And the cry of human suffering will not be stilled by promises. War is work, and that work must be done now! If they draft women, our sex will learn more about discipline and authority au-thority in six weeks than most of us experience in a lifetime. Life to some women will seem one long outrageous out-rageous injustice. How many women wom-en would have been silent, as the boys were silent, over the conditions in our first enormous army camps a few months ago? The conditions have been changed; they are being steadily bettered, but at first they meant almost constant discomfort for the draftees. Cold, boredom, mud, poor food, uncertain, ties of every sort were their life. But they were in the army, and they took it as a matter of course. Are you ready, as a woman, for that sort of thing? Or can't we women do our full share of war work without being hammered into line? I am afraid it will have to come to that. I believe that within six months or a year every woman and girl will have to register; there will be training camps for officers, and there will be no more room for the petty squabbles and jealousies that threaten women's war work today. Quarreled for Power. I say this because of my own experience ex-perience in an enormous organization organiza-tion of women a few years ago. These women were first of all for peace, and, secondly, almost all mothers of sons. But from the beginning be-ginning they quarreled for place, power and .title. They wrote me endless letters complaining of each other. On several occasions they took petty cases to court, once trying try-ing to prove that one of their leaders lead-ers hadn't really been the first one to think of the ideals of the league, and at another time to challenge the citizenship of a valued charter member. mem-ber. Months were wasted while they argued and threatened; on the occasion occa-sion of our first annual convention certain disaffected members threatened threat-ened the delegates with warrants, and warned us all by wire that our meeting would be broken up by the police. The millions they were actual ac-tual millions of peace-loving members mem-bers faded away. Men can't get along and take orders or-ders without definite, unquestionable authority. When the top-sergeant, or the pip-squeak lieutenant, or the unreasonable captain speaks, they obey. In the ranks of our armies today, humbly taking orders, are some of the boys who, if they live, will be our great men tomorrow. The President of 1962 probably is doing K.P. duty, turning out early and gulping his camp coffee and beans with the rest of them. |