Service Department, but there has been
decentralization and the Land Army is now a department of the Board of
Agriculture. It is headed by Miss M. Talbot as director. Under this
central body are Women's Agricultural Committees in each county, with an
organizing secretary whose duty it is to secure full-time recruits.

The part-time workers in a locality are obtained by the wife of the
squire or vicar acting as a volunteer registrar. Many of these
part-time workers register to do the domestic work of the lusty young
village housewife or mother while she is absent from home performing her
allotted task on a nearby farm. The full-time recruits are not only
secured by the organizers, but through registrations at every post
office. Any woman can ask for a registration card and fill it out, and
the postmaster then forwards the application to the committee. The next
step is that likely applicants are called to the nearest center for
examination and presentation of credentials. When finally accepted they
are usually sent for six weeks' or three months' training to a farm
belonging to some large estate. The landlord contributes the training,
and the government gives the recruit her uniform and fifteen shillings a
week to cover her board and lodging. At the end of her course she
receives an armlet signifying her rank in the Land Army and is ready to
go wherever the authorities send her.

The farmer in Great Britain no longer needs to be converted to the value
of the new workers. He knows they can do every kind of farm work as well
as men, and are more reliable and conscientious than boys, and he is
ready, therefore, to pay the required minimum wage of eighteen
shillings a week, or above that amount if the rate ruling in the
district is higher.

Equally well organized is the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, familiarly
known as the Waacs. The director is Mrs. Chalmers Watson. A would-be
Waac goes to the center in her county for examination, and then is
assigned to work at home or "somewhere in France" according to training
and capacity. She may be fitted as a cook, a storekeeper, a telephone or
telegraph operator, or for signalling or salvage work. Let us not say
she will supplant a man, but rather set a man free for fuller service.

My niece, a slip of a girl, felt the call of duty at the beginning of
the war. Her brothers were early volunteers in Kitchener's Army. They
were in the trenches and she longed for the sensation of bea