and pines. They looked like boys in overcoats and boots
and tall wool caps, leaning at ease there on their heavy rifles. Some
were only fifteen years of age. Some had been servants, some
saleswomen, stenographers, telephone operators, dressmakers, workers
in the fields, students at the university, dancers, laundresses. And a
few had been born into the aristocracy.

They came, too, from all parts of the huge, sprawling Empire, these
girl-soldiers of the Battalion of Death--and there were Cossack girls
and gypsies among them--girls from Finland, Courland, from the Urals,
from Moscow, from Siberia--from North, South, East, West.

There were Jewesses from the Pale and one Jewess from America in the
ranks; there were Chinese girls, Poles, a child of fifteen from
Trebizond, a Japanese girl, a French peasant lass; and there were
Finns, too, and Scandinavians--all with clipped hair under the
astrakhan caps--sturdy, well shaped, soldierly girls who handled their
heavy rifles without effort and carried a regulation equipment as
though it were a sheaf of flowers.

Their commanding officer was a woman of forty. She lounged in front of
the battalion in the snow, consulting with half a dozen officers of a
man's regiment.

The colour guard stood grouped around the battalion colours, where its
white and gold folds swayed languidly in the breeze, and clots of
virgin snow fell upon it, shaken down from the pines by the
cannonade.

Estridge gazed at them in silence. In his man's mind one thought
dominated--the immense pity of it all. And there was a dreadful
fascination in looking at these girl soldiers, whose soft, warm flesh
was so soon to be mangled by shrapnel and slashed by bayonets.

"Good heavens," he muttered at last under his breath. "Was this
necessary?"

"The men ran," said Miss Dumont.

"It was the filthy boche propaganda that demoralised them," rejoined
Estridge. "I wonder--_are_ women more level headed? Is propaganda
wasted on these girl soldiers? Are they really superior to the male
of the species?"

"I think," said Miss Dumont softly, "that their spiritual intelligence
is deeper."

"They see more clearly, morally?"

"I don't know.... I think so sometimes.... We women, who are born
capable of motherhood, seem to be fashioned also to realise Christ
more clearly--and the holy mother who bore him.... I don't know if
that's the reason--or if, truly, in us a little flame burns more
constantly--the passion which