Page:Scouting for girls, adapted from Girl guiding.djvu/227

Rh entered unconsciously into active citizenship from which there is no retreat.

The great experiment is here. American girls are showing that they are made of the same stuff as their sturdy forefathers, and by thousands are entering untried and difficult fields and finding themselves capable of doing a great many things that their brothers and fathers have heretofore done. Handcraft, industries and professions have all been opened to young women. They are working in farm and field, factory and railway, bank and business office, hospital and camp, canteen and reconstruction. Girls and women with clear heads and adaptability are entering in amazing numbers into business and professional life, proving that their brains are not inferior to those of men. They have been keen to take up new tasks and quick to learn unfamiliar processes and their employers have been generous in acknowledging that skill comes only with practice.

But the authorities found on examining women for their new employments, that the lack was not entirely or fundamentally that of technical training but that a preliminary course was needed particularly in health knowledge and in discipline. These things would have been useful in any line of work, whether for war or for peace, and we are now awake to the necessity of such training. If a girl is to be equally efficient with her brother for work in the world, she must be given equal chances with him, equal chances for gaining character and skill discipline and bodily health, and equal chances for using these when she has got them.