A Woman's Struggle in a Man's World

...The most famous woman journalist to venture into the Korean war, and holder of the highest decorations in reward for her courage in braving the fire to gather news for the press.

"...Any woman who wants to enter man's working field while believing herself less capable than he, and confessing her helplessness because she is a female, is not fit for his world, and had better avoid the gamble," says Marguerite Higgins, the daring American journalist who writes the lead article of the most famous newspaper in the world, the New York Herald Tribune.

Marguerite entered the world of journalism at twenty-four, and distinguished herself in it while still at the universities of California and Columbia, where she was appointed correspondent for the latter before finishing her studies in 1941. The sun of that day had not set before the dawn of her success broke, as a result of the echo of her valuable address on the day she left the university, when she was appointed head of the staff of the aforementioned newspaper. She threw herself into the work with the energy of a giant who knows no weariness. She thinks much, speaks as little as possible, and is earnest, so as to create an atmosphere of partnership between herself and her brother man — avoiding excessive demands and orders, lest it be said that she exploits the position of the femininity complete in her, with its beauty that penetrates to the depths of hearts. In her glances there is a deep calm mingled with ambition and hope in the unknown future, and in her voice a huskiness that draws the listener to her. Slender of figure, the curls of her golden hair falling over her forehead lend her the simplicity of a child, which rouses a man's chivalry to attend to her before he reads in her features the determination and steadfastness against life's temptations. Daring, integrity, and boldness are her most prominent qualities. She is frank in her speech and in her writings. Her greatest book, "War in Korea," explains the position of Europe and the instability of the Near and Far East, appreciating the struggle and the difficulty of its ascent — and there is no end of telling what mockery and ridicule Marguerite met with from her male colleagues when she boarded the plane bound for Korea, two days after war broke out there, to verify the reports for herself and to furnish her paper with the nearest thing to accuracy and truth.

She was the only woman among three hundred male competitors in the field of war. They whispered among themselves, sounding out one another's opinions about her, and the answer of those who pitied her was: "This is a man's fight" — woman has no part in it. At the first cannon she hears, she will turn back. All this did not turn her from her resolve, and she did not allow her femininity to come between her and her ambition. The roar of the cannon did not shake her, the moaning of the wounded did not frighten her, and the flowing blood did not daunt her. She accompanied the infantry

to the front, carrying with her her typewriter, her lipstick, and her comb — testimony to the calm of her nerves, and to remind her companions that she was a woman!!

Many of her competitors fell back when the fighting grew fierce; as for her, she wallowed in the mud, made the earth her bed and the dew of the sky her blanket, and never missed a dispatch. She performed woman's office as kneader of dough, cook, and nurse. She carried the wounded to the hospitals, watched over them, and stayed up many nights without food or drink, until many counted her daring as madness.

Perhaps that thought steals over us too; but her performance of her double duty refutes it. What, then, is the secret of her courage, and of her difference from the pampered women of the age in America, who consider life a soft bed?

Opportunities did not offer themselves to Marguerite Higgins in her early years to give herself over to elegance. She was born in Hong Kong in 1920, of a French mother and an Irish-American father, and was brought up in China and then in France until she had almost passed her first decade. The unanimity of her surroundings in glorifying fighting men and encircling them with marks of reverence and admiration — all this, together with other inner factors, created in her soul strength and hardness, and she flung herself forward with all her powers, answering the call of duty and responsibility, however great they might be. She despises everyone who shirks a service, saying: society has no need, from this day on, of its ladies drowning in damask and silk; whoever will not accept a substitute for the traditions of the past is not fit for the future and its developments.

As for Marguerite's philosophy of life, it is this: to forget the past if we fail, to work for the present, and to hope in the future... and he who grows up on a thing grows old on it!

From the Ladies' Home Journal