enrolled. This corps was the link between the independent voluntary associations of women, such as the Emergency Corps, formed on the outbreak of war, and the official women's services, two of which (described below) were sections of the Women's Legion.
Throughout 1915 and 1916 efforts were made by voluntary organizations such as the Women's Legion and the Women's Defence Relief Corps, under Mrs. Dawson Scott, as well as by the Govern- ment, through the War Agricultural Committees of the Board of Trade, of which 63 had been set up before July 1916, to induce women to offer their services on the land and to persuade farmers to accept them. The Women's Farm and Garden Union was the most important of the bodies which had dealt with women's work on the land before the war, and, realizing that each individual woman was an object lesson for good or ill to the farmers whose favour had to be won, the Union started a system of training farms in the autumn of 1915. Early in 1916 the Government provided a grant, and the Women's National Land Service Corps under Mrs. iRoland Wilkins was launched as a war off-shoot of the Farm and Garden Union, to deal with emergencywar-work on the land. By the end of the year the demand for women had become greater than could be met by a small voluntary association, and, as the result of a deputation from the Corps to the Minister of Agriculture, the Women's Land Army was instituted early in 1917 as a Women's Branch of the Board of Agriculture. The Corps continued to act as the agent of the Land Army for organizing the supply of educated women as seasonal workers. In all 9,022 workers were sent out, and in 1918 the flax harvest was saved by 3,835 holiday workers from the Corps.
By the spring of 1915 shell-work for women was beginning; in March women tram conductors started work at Glasgow, and girls were employed as telegraph operators in Liverpool. But women were impatient at the slowness of the progress of industrial substitution and at the uselessness of the Women's War Service Register com- piled by the Board of Trade in March 1915. The suffrage societies urged the Government to face the need for the recognition of the claim of women to be employed on war production, and in July 1915 a procession and deputation to Mr. Lloyd George was organized by Mrs. Pankhurst to assert this claim. In connexion with the demand for skilled workers, the London Society for Women's Suffrage, which promoted the introduction of women into occupations hitherto reserved for men, started a Munitions and Aircraft Department in July 1915, and arranged the first training classes in oxy-acetylene welding. The pupils were the first women welders to enter the engineering trade, and after two years the Ministry of Munitions assumed financial responsibility for the school.
Messrs. Bcardmore in Glasgow and Messrs. Vickers at Barrow-in- Furness and at Erith employed women on shell-making in the spring of 1915. In order to ease the strain due to Sunday work, a band of Women Relief Munition Workers, educated women of the leisured class, were organized by Lady Cowan and Lady Moir and trained in the rough turning and boring of 4-5 shells and l8-lb. shrap- nel at Erith; they bound themselves after training to undertake week-end shifts for six months.
In 1915 and 1916 work in canteens, hostels and clubs, formed by voluntary agency in connexion with the welfare of munition workers, absorbed a large number of voluntary women workers. Lady Lawrence obtained permission to enter the almost sacred precincts of Woolwich Arsenal in May 1915 and organized the Munition Workers Canteen Committee, which provided light refreshments at many munition factories and had 1,250 workers. The movement for establishing munition and dock workers canteens, essential for the health of the worker and the consequent output of munitions, dates from this initial effort. About 500 canteens for munition and dock workers were started by 12 voluntary societies: the Muni- tions Auxiliary Committee of the Y.M.C.A.; the Y.W.C.A. ; the Church Army; the Salvation Army; the Church of England Temperance Society; the National Peoples' Palaces Association; the Y.M.C.A., Scotland; the British Women's Temperance Asso- ciation, Scotland; the Glasgow Union of Women Workers; the Women's Volunteer Reserve; and the Women's Legion. The latter employed 2,000 paid whole-time canteen workers, but it is estimated that over 10,000 voluntary part-time workers were in attendance at less than 130 out of the 500 canteens.
The Munitions Auxiliary Committee of the Y.M.C.A. under the presidency of Princess Helena Victoria opened 183 of these 500 canteensand had over 10,000 women workers. In all, between 35,000 and 40,000 women gave their services to the Y.M.C.A. in England during the war. The canteen work was undertaken to meet an emer- gency and to set the canteens going more quickly than would have been possible under any other system. But it was wasteful of volun- tary labour, and in 1916 the Central Control Board became the responsible authority for the organization of industrial canteens in munition works throughout the country, and encouraged the em- ployment of paid workers.
The steady withdrawal of men from civilian to military life led in 1916 and 1917 to a remarkable expansion in the scope and volume of women's work (see WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT). The growth of the Women's Services, and the demand for women as substitutes for men in industrial occupations and in the Civil Service, caused a consequent diminution in the number of voluntary workers and in the relative importance of the voluntary corps.
II. The Women's Services. The Women's Services were of two types. First came those composed of "enrolled" women in the legal sense, who were in the direct employment of the War De- partments, and whose contracts brought them within the regula- tions of the Defence of the Realm Act. The women could be enrolled as " mobile " workers for home service only, or for ser- vice at home and abroad; or as " immobile " workers, recruited for local employment, who could not be required to move away from the district. Secondly came those composed of " non- enrolled " women in the legal sense, who did not render them- selves liable to penalties under the Defence of the Realm Act and might be engaged on an annual or weekly contract. Some ser- vices enrolled their women for a year only and others for the duration of the war.
(A.) ENROLLED WOMEN
The Army Nursing Services. Before the war the only women's auxiliary army services in existence were Queen Alexandra's Im- perial Military Nursing Service and Reserve, and the Territorial Force Nursing Service. The V.A.D.s, founded in 1909 under the British Red Cross Society and Order of St. John of Jerusalem, de- veloped a section of 12,000 V.A.D. nursing members, enrolled under the War Office in 1915 for service in military hospitals, and a section of 6,000 General Service members, enrolled for general service in connexion with military hospitals in 1917.
The Q.A.I. M.N.S. expanded from a corps of 800 trained nurses to 10,304; and theT.F.N.S. from 2,738 nurses ready to serve when war broke out to 8,140 (see NURSING).
The Military Massage Service. The Military Massage Service started its career in Aug. 1914 under the name of the Almeric Paget Massage Corps. It was maintained by Mr. Almeric Paget (after- ward Lord Queenborough) and Mrs. Almeric Paget (d. 1916), and consisted of 50 fully-trained masseuses who, early in Sept. 1914, were distributed among the principal military hospitals in the United Kingdom, this number being shortly increased to loo. Lady Essex French was hon. secretary.
The next development of the work of the Corps was in Nov. 1914, when a massage and electrical out-patient clinic was opened in Lon- don for the treatment of wounded officers and men, financed till Dec. 1920 by Mr. and Mrs. Paget. During the war over 200 patients were treated in the clinic daily. It was inspected by the Director- General Army Medical Service in March 1915 and subsequently became the model for the massage and electrical departments in the convalescent hospitals and command depots throughout the United Kingdom. Early in 1915 the War Office officially recognized the Corps by making it the body to which all masseuses and masseurs engaged for service in military hospitals must belong. An advisory committee was instituted by the War Office, which laid down the standard of training and qualifications required and formed sub- committees to select the candidates. Thus the admission of untrained or partially trained personnel was prevented, and the interests of the patients and of the massage profession were safeguarded.
In Dec. 1916 the word " Military " was added to the title of the Corps, and in Jan. 1919 it became known as the Military Massage Service by Army Council Instruction.
It was not until Jan. 1917 that military masseuses were required for service overseas, but from that date up to six months after the signing of the Armistice 56 masseuses served in France and Italy; 3,388 masseuses and masseurs had been enrolled in the service and there were over 2,000 actually at work on the day the Armistice was signed. (The Regulations for the Corps are set out in A.C.I. 779, 1,262 and 1,146 of 1917, and 65,308 and 489 of 1919.)
The Women's Legion, Cooks and Motor-drivers. In July 1915, a scheme was originated by the Marchioness of Londonderry, founder and president of the Women's Legion, which was approved by the Q.M.G., and put into operation at Dartford Camp convalescent hospital, for taking over the whole of the kitchens and installing women cooks. The objects were to release men for the work which women could do; to improve the cooking and cleaning of the camps and to introduce economies and variety in the feeding of the troops. The experiment proved a success; other camps were taken over, and an A.C.I. of Feb. 1916 defined the position of the cooks. The first Commandant was Miss Lilian Barker who, when she became welfare superintendent at Woolwich Arsenal, was succeeded by Dame Flor- ence Leach. Mrs. Long, who lost her life in the torpedoing of the " Warilda," was hon. secretary. Ultimately 4,000 women cooks and waitresses replaced men in camps and convalescent hospitals in Great Britain; they signed a contract for a year, but were not enrolled until the organization became part of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps in Sept. 1917. Those who transferred retained the right to wear the Women's Legion badge.
Women motor drivers, mechanics and storekeepers were first employed as substitutes for men of the R.A.S.C. in April 1916, and of the R.F.C. in the following September. The women were re- cruited and put into uniform by the Women's Legion under Miss Christobel Ellis, and were paid by the army. There was no enrol- ment until the Section was taken over by the W.A.A.C. in 1917.
