An 1870s report, which I recently stumbled upon, reminded me of a far-earlier one. And I could only reflect that some things never change; the circle comes round again – but sometimes with a twist.

Do war's burdens fall heavily upon the womenfolk, particularly upon the young women? Over 2400 years ago Lysistrata so asserted, in arguing with the Magistrate (his lines are in blue):

We are the people who feel it the keenliest,
. . .Doubly on us the affliction is cast;
Where are the sons that we sent to your battlefields?
. . .Silence! a truce to the ills that are past.
Then in the glory and grace of our womanhood,
. . .All in the May and the morning of life,
Lo, we are sitting forlorn and disconsolate,
. . .What has a soldier to do with a wife?
We might endure it, but ah! for the younger ones,
. . .Still in their maiden apartments they stay,
Waiting the husband that never approaches them,
. . .Watching the years that are gliding away.
Men, I suppose, have their youth everlastingly.
. . .Nay, but it isn't the same with a man:
Grey though he be when he comes from the battlefield,
. . .Still if he wishes to marry, he can.
Brief is the spring and the flower of our womanhood,
. . .Once let it slip, and it comes not again;
Sit as we may with our spells and our auguries,
. . .Never a husband will marry us then.

To compare/contrast the 1870s article, see below.

The 1870s article had a different slant on the horrors which war afflicts upon young women.

The flutter in the navy, say the gossips, is making sad havoc in Washington society. No less than fifty officers in Washington have received orders to hold themselves in readiness for immediate duty. Think of it! Half a hundred eligible beaux disposed of it one fell swoop. The girls have been bewailing all the early portion of the year the deficiency of winter escorts. What will they do if the fifty alluded to disappear from the social horizon? Washington is no market for marriageable girls under the most prosperous circumstances. The men they meet there in society are no desirable matches or the average accomplished society girl. The distinguished gentlemen find society a snare and delusion; the ambitions young men have no time to waste on such unsatisfactory vanity, and so the men who can dance well and talk small gossip and the latest social events, are admitted into circles where brains are not demanded as an "open sesame. It is astonishing, say the gossips, what specimens of the genus homo are encouraged and smiled upon by superior women. Last winter there were more small men in society than ever before. There was one officer, a trifle taller than Thomas Thumb, perhaps, who was the recipient of all sorts of adulations and attentions. He never sat quite five minutes at a time during a German, and he had more invitations every day to dine here, sup there and dance at another place, than his small hands could hold, or his pitiful head dispose of. "Dear me!" said an elderly lady, who had been an attentive observer of all that passed, "if the girls make such a fuss over that small piece of humanity, what would they do if a real man should make his appearance?"