Before I went to France in May 1916 I was inclined to believe that only a small percentage of women would stand the test; but since then I have seen hundreds of women at work in the munition factories of France.  As I have told in another chapter, they had then been at work for some sixteen months, and, of poor physique in the beginning, were now strong healthy animals with no sign of breakdown.  They were more satisfactory in every way than men, for they went home and slept all night, drank only the light wines of their country, smoked less, if at all, and had a more natural disposition toward cleanliness.  Their bare muscular arms looked quite capable of laying a man prostrate if he came home and ordered them about, and their character and pride had developed in proportion.[F]

  [F] Dr. Rosalie Morton, the leading woman doctor and surgeon of New
      York, who also studied this subject at first hand, agrees with
      me that the war tasks have improved the health of the European
      women.

It is not to be imagined, however, that the younger, at least, of these women will cling to those greasy jobs when the world is normal again and its tempered prodigals are spending money on the elegancies of life once more.  And if they slump back into the sedentary life when men are ready to take up their old burdens, making artificial flowers, standing all day in the fetid atmosphere of crowded and noisy shops, stitching everlastingly at lingerie, there, it seems to me, lies the danger of breakdown.  The life they lead now, arduous as it is, not only has developed their muscles, their lungs, the power to digest their food, but they are useful members of society on the grand scale, and to fall from any height is not conducive to the well-being of body or spirit.  No doubt, when the sudden release comes, they will return to the lighter tasks with a sense of immense relief; but will it last?  Will it be more than a momentary reaction to the habit of their own years and of the centuries behind, or will they gradually become aware (after they have rested and romped and enjoyed the old life in the old fashion when off duty) that with the inferior task they have become the inferior sex again.  The wife, to be sure, will feel something more than her husband’s equal, and the Frenchwoman never has felt herself the inferior in the matrimonial partnership.  But how about the wage earners?  Those that made ten to fifteen francs a day in the Usines de Guerre, and will now be making four or five?  How about the girls who cannot marry because their families are no longer in a position to pay the dot, without which no French girl dreams of marrying?  These girls not only have been extraordinarily (for Frenchwomen of their class) affluent during the long period of the war, but they order men about, and they are further upheld with the thought that they are helping their beloved France to conquer the enemy.  They live on another plane, and life is apt to seem very mean and commonplace under the old conditions.