A year ago the only women in London in uniform were the nurses. Now so many are in uniform that to one visitor they presented the most surprising change the war has brought to that city. Those who live in London, to whom the change has come gradually, are probably hardly aware how significant it is. Few people, certainly few men, guessed that so many positions that before the war were open only to men, could be filled quite as acceptably by women. Only the comic papers guessed it. All that they ever mocked at, all the suffragettes and "equal rights" women ever hoped for seems to have come true. Even women policemen. True, they do not take the place of the real, immortal London bobby, neither do the "special constables," but if a young girl is out late at night with her young man in khaki, she is held up by a policewoman and sent home. And her young man in khaki dare not resist.
In Paris, when the place of a man who had been mobilized was taken by his wife, sister, or daughter, no one was surprised. Frenchwomen have for years worked in partnership with men to a degree unknown in England. They helped as bookkeepers, shopkeepers; in the restaurant they always handled the money; in the theatres the ushers and box openers were women; the government tobacco-shops were run by women. That Frenchwomen were capable, efficient, hard working was as trite a saying as that the Japanese are a wonderful little people. So when the men went to the front and the women carried on their work, they were only proving a proverb.
But in England careers for women, outside those of governess, typist, barmaid, or show girl, which entailed marrying a marquis, were as few as votes. The war has changed that. It gave woman her chance, and she jumped at it. "When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again" he will find he must look for a man's job, and that men's jobs no longer are sinecures. In his absence women have found out, and, what is more important, the employers have found out that to open a carriage door and hold an umbrella over a customer is not necessarily a man's job. The man will have to look for a position his sister cannot fill, and, judging from the present aspect of London, those positions are rapidly disappearing.