Woman warrior

“ Yet after her second or third appearance all traces of nervousness vanish, because now she is accustomed to her surroundings.
The warrior who will face death on the field without compunction may fly in terror if he hear the buzz of a moth. Or if he is unused to feminine society he will be completely cowered by a single woman. ”

“ As that war-blast pass'd by,
And redder grew each warrior cheek,
Brighter each warrior eye.
But other cheeks grew pale to hear,
And other eyes grew dim;
Woman shares not man's battle joy—
That joy is all for him. ”

“ In that supreme moment, after the hell of shot and shell, after the thousands of wounded and dead, after the endless agonies of attack and repulse and attack and defeat and surrender, something quite unexpected was here emerging, the essence of the Eternal Feminine, the woman supreme in her sheer womanhood ”

“ Instances are not wanting of heroic women of those early days who were capable of holding and defending person and property against aggression and warfare. But the logic of events was strong then, as now, and the destiny of the woman was not that of military supremacy. ”

“ There is no separate art of war, because in war you merely practise the arts of peace rather badly, such as baking and washing, and cooking and digging, and travelling about. On the spot it is a wretched scuffle; and the side that wins is the side that succeeds in making the other side believe it to be invincible. When the women can do that, they've won."
"They don't look like doing it to-night, do they?" [14] said the woman's husband breezily. "Thirteen women and six thousand police, you know!" ”

“ And the rest must always watch fearfully, furtively looking down Main Street as the years of strife wear on. Who shall say whether she too may be conscripted to "carry on" for life. For this is the way of war with women.
Like this, the trust and the burden have rested heavier and heavier on woman's heart and hands. Millions of men will never be able to lift it for her again. No one knows when the others will. Men must fight and women must work.
So many men are with the flag at the front. So many men are under the crosses, the acres of crosses with which battle fields are planted. ”

“ When, the terrible war-whoop was heard, the heroism of these hundred women rose equal to the emergency. They did not cling helplessly to their husbands—the women of those early days were made of sterner stuff—but with pale, set faces, they joined in the defense, and the records say, were most of them killed fighting bravely. They died a soldier's death upon the field of battle in defense of home and country. They died that the prairies of the West and the wilderness of the North should at a later period become the peaceful homes of untold millions of men and women. ”

“ I am proud of my country; only wish I could fight in the ranks with our brave soldiers, to prove my enthusiasm; would think death, mutilation, glorious in such a cause; cry, "War to all eternity before we submit." But if I can't fight, being unfortunately a woman, which I now regret for the first time in my life, at least I can help in other ways. ”

“ I think the cannon have stopped at Cross Keys, and that they are resting on the field.—Now, for us women. I do not think that we do badly now. We serve all day and half the night, and we keep up the general heart. I think that if in any old romance we read of women like the women of the South in this war we would say, 'Those women were heroic.' We have been at war for a year and two months. I see no end of it. It is a desert, and no one knows how wide it is. We may travel for years. Beside every marching soldier, there marches invisible a woman soldier too. ”

“ Of one thing let us be sure, whatever may be your ultimate intentions toward this unfortunate young woman, whoever would offer her injury or insult in the future must figure on making a full accounting to me. I understand that you belittle all sentiments of generosity and kindliness, but I do not, and I can convince your most doughty warrior that these characteristics are not incompatible with an ability to fight." ”

“ If, however, it has been through her repellent pride, that ought not to hurt you, for a woman is like a soldier, who only puts on his armor when he is threatened by an opponent whose weapons he fears. ”

“ So many famous sieges where the Women have been seen forgeting the weakness of their sex, building new walls, digging trenches with their feeble hands, furnishing arms to their defenders, they themselves darting the missile weapons on the enemy, resigning the ornaments of their apparel, and their fortune, to fill the public treasury, and to hasten the deliverance of their country ”

“ The insatiable monster, war, robs woman of all that is dear and precious to her. It exacts her brothers, lovers, sons, and in return gives her a life of loneliness and despair. Yet the greatest supporter and worshiper of war is woman. She it is who instills the love of conquest and power into her children; she it is who whispers the glories of war into the ears of her little ones, and who rocks her baby to sleep with the tunes of trumpets and the noise of guns. It is woman, too, who crowns the victor on his return from the battlefield. ”

“ Among these non-combatants who wanted to see the war were many women, and if, mixed with their patriotism and desire to help, went a streak of that love of danger which is no disgrace to a man—why, I maintain that it is no disgrace to a woman either, but as natural an instinct as that which drives one to a wayside orchard if one is hungry. ”

“ Suffragists seem to forget, when they boast of Joan of Arc, that the army she led was masculine.
The English socialist, Mrs. Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in her addresses in this country two years ago, said: "Woman is not protected through chivalry, but because the men know that to put women to the front is national suicide. Woman's part in war is not to wail or weep, but to furnish the army for the future." ”

“ Every war produces its singular characters whose influence or example are not without their due effect upon the troops, and, at the conclusion of these chapters, which are so stained with blood and battle, it may not be useless to sketch, even upon the grave page of history, the deeds of a woman whose courageous spirit bore her through all the trials of this bombardment, but whose masculine hardihood was softened by the gentleness of a female heart. ”

“ In this war woman has been as brave as man or braver. She has given of her best and dearest, she has worked and prayed and endured. And away out there among our wounded and dying, far from the excitement of battle, by day and by night she has given herself—all she is and all she has—to the service of her country. ”

“ Sometimes the savage foe came in overwhelming numbers, and in such cases the only safety lay in flight, during which all woman's address and fortitude was called into requisition, either to devise means of successfully eluding her pursuers, or to endure the toils and hardships of a rapid march. Sometimes she stood with loaded gun in her household garrison, and faced the enemy, either repelling them, or dying at her post, or, what was worse than death, seeing her loved ones butchered before her eyes, and their being led into a cruel captivity. ”

“ I think the war will have made a great difference to many of our men.”
“And to our women too, I hope,” said Miss Beasley, who, unnoticed by Veronica, had joined the group. “It would be a poor thing for the country if only the men came purified out of this time of trouble. ‘A nation rises no higher than its women!’ And now is Woman’s great opportunity. ”

“ And then do we women not like to think of Mlle. Deletete staying at her post in the telegraph office in Houplines in spite of German bombardments, and calmly facing tormentors, when they smashed her instruments and threatened her with death. One-tenth of France in the enemy's hands, and in each village and town some woman staying behind to nurse the sick and wounded, to calm the population when panic threatens, to stand invincible between the people and their conquerors! ”

“ Why exactly many savages have made it a rule to refrain from women in time of war, we cannot say for certain, but we may conjecture that their motive was a superstitious fear lest, on the principles of sympathetic magic, close contact with women should infect them with feminine weakness and cowardice. Similarly some savages imagine that contact with a woman in childbed enervates warriors and enfeebles their weapons. ”

“ When woman arises and asserts herself, as the sharp-tongued, thin-lipped puritaness proposes, and is no longer dependent, man s arm will no longer be reached as a shield, but as a sword.
Whenever woman succeeds in making herself a soldier she must fight. ”

“ In an anti-militarist, that sort of prejudice against women is most inconsistent. Who was it that hammered a nail into Sisera's head? A woman, and an anti-military woman. Who was it that stuck a knife into that horrid beast Marat, when he was sitting in his bath? ”

“ He had no words in which to express his sense of women's power in the world. The press of the country in its kind and generous reference to the Amer- can soldiers, in the late war, has spoken of victory as attributable to " the men behind the guns." He wished to qualify that, and say that victory was due, in large measure, to the "women behind the men behind the guns. " (Loud applause.) He cited a number of instances to prove the courage of woman in times when death was the almost certain end. ”

“ She must live or perish with it. In helplessness and disgust, the men thought the only way to accomplish the purpose of demolishing the idol was to put an end to the woman. Under the commander's order, a soldier drew out his sword and cut off the head of the woman. ”

“ It is not to-day as it was before woman took her destiny in her hand and went out upon the battle-fields, and into the camp, and endured hunger and cold for the sake of her country. The whole country has been vitalized by this war. What if woman did not carry the bayonet on the battle-field? She carried that which gave more strength and energy. Traveling through Illinois, I saw the women bind the sheaf, bring in the harvest and plow the fields, that men might fight the battles. ”

“ The European struggle recently ended furnished a remarkable example of female heroism and devotion to country in the case of the Russian woman who enlisted as a common soldier in the army of the Czar, served with distinction and finally organized an effective unit of female soldiers known as the "Battalion of Death." ”

“ Those of woman! When the French had broken through the barriers, the maid of Saragossa rushed to the breach. The demand of the invader came to Palafox, and he trembled; but what the heart of man was unequal to, the courage of woman could perform, and the answer of the heroic maiden was, "War to the knife!" And so, always when man has faltered, woman, earnest and simple-hearted, has answered, War to the knife with evil! ”

“ The generalship of a woman is never so keen, so instinct with strategy, as when she gives battle against another of her sex. Her campaign against men, when once she takes up arms, is mimic warfare—a sham fight—compared to this. Against a man, she needs but a company of fascinations, and in one attack his squares—the stern veterans of determination—are driven to flight. But with a woman, whole regiments of cunning, whole battalions of craft, with all the well-trained scouts of intuition and all the dashing cavalries of charm, are needed to rout her absolutely from the field. ”

“ The sporadic courage of a-woman-duellist, with rapier, broadsword and pistol, is essentially of the military kind. The French Communal struggles in 1870-71, developed many amazingly courageous women-soldiers, who defended barricades and fought like tigresses. ”

“ They held up to admiration all those women who from time to time have arrested the victorious progress of conquerors, made of their bodies a field of battle, a means of ruling, a weapon; who have vanquished by their heroic caresses hideous or detested beings, and sacrificed their chastity to vengeance and devotion.
All was said with due restraint and regard for propriety, the effect heightened now and then by an outburst of forced enthusiasm calculated to excite emulation.
A listener would have thought at last that the one role of woman on earth was a perpetual sacrifice of her person, a continual abandonment of herself to the caprices of a hostile soldiery. ”

“ But how was a woman to go to war? If it had been difficult in the remote past when Jeanne d'Arc was alive, how much more was success beyond her grasp in a country controlled by modern law and the regulations of a well organized national army. But Maria dressed herself in man's clothes and made her way back to her home, beating her way with difficulty on trains that were crowded with soldiers, and taking over two months to accomplish the difficult journey from Siberia. ”

“ A much greater number escaped detection, some of them passing entirely through the campaigns, while others were made known by wounds or on being found lifeless upon the battle-field. The history of the war—which has never yet been truly written—is full of heroism in which woman is the central figure. ”

“ These women are no longer reformers, they are rebels, and they are going to win.... Woman's hour has struck at last and all along the line there is a mobilization of the woman's army ready for service. We are going forward with flags flying to win. If you are not for us you are against us. Justice for the women of the world is coming. ”

“ They say that there was a fighting outfit composed of Russian women and known as The Battalion of Death, but these soldiers were known as women also. There have been any number of modern stories and plays with plots depending upon the use of masks, veils, disguises and aliases; duels have been fought by women in men’s clothing; and there was a famous duelist named Chevalier d’Eon, who dressed as a woman every time he appeared in Paris—because the King had banished him from Paris—and he had been the recipient of love favors from many courtiers, who thought he really was a woman. ”