WOMEN AND THE WAR. T HE thousands of women who marched
through the London streets last Saturday, earnestly determined to insist upon their privilege of serving the country, made an impressive spectacle. It is not too much to say that without the help and inspiration of the women we could not win the war. But we have had the good fortune to know from the moment that war was declared that if we did not win it would not be the fault of the women. All fears that a great war would be too nerve-shattering and too horrible for women to give their moral sanction for its continuance have been absolutely dissipated. We have heard of no single case of a woman throwing impediments in the way through a loss of nerve, or through that kind of particularism which might have been expected to make many women argue in terms of deeply moved personal affection rather than of the intellect. No woman has cried in agony that the future of the world might go hang so long as her husband or her son was safe. We can hardly find words in which to express'our admiration for this noble bearing, this limit- less capacity for sacrifice. It would be a, great mistake to suppose that, striking as the procession of last Saturday was, readiness to serve and to suffer is the peculiar characteristic of those who take part in processions. These qualities exist in every corner of the Empire. The women understand that civilization—the safety and freedom of every civilized home in the world—must, since fate would have it so, be purchased by blood, and having made up their minds to it they have shown no tremor of hesitation. Beranger wrote :— " Pres de la borne a. cheque Etat commence Aucun api n'est pur de sang humain "; but there is a terrible enlargement of that truth. If every nation rises in bloodshed, it is plain that even so it cannot thereby compound for peace ever after, how- ever peaceful its intentions may be. It must be ready to fight to retain every amenity of life, every gentleness, every art of peace, which a developing civilization has brought to it.
The women have done more than make willing sacrifices for this, the greatest object for which a nation ever fought. When they have given all that they had in losing husband, son, or brother, they have not shut themselves upend brooded or fallen into a stateof forlorn and unhelpful passivity. They have gone straight on their way with brave faces. They have continued to do what they were doing before. They have even increased their efforts, and given to the cause the reserves of ministering power which could no longer have a private or personal application. It has been said that many thousands of women who draw more money now than they ever received before have very good reason to be content with the war. It is suggested that they have been bribed, as it were, and that their complaisance is not real. Every one who has analysed the feelings of women who have sent their men to the war must know that this is a libel. The bravery of poor women is as remarkable as that of the rich. They do not— because they are incapable of doing so—balance their affection for the absent soldier against the advantage of having seven, eight, or nine shillings a week more than they had before. We heard of an instructive little comedy at the beginning of the war, when appeals were being made for recruits. A mother suddenly turned up at the town in which her son was working. She was not in the habit of visiting him, and the only deduction her friends could draw from her choice of this moment for an unpremeditated visit was that she had gone to tell him that his first duty was to her and that he must not " go for a soldier." But they were hopelessly wrong. She had gone to see that her son meant to do his duty, and to say good-bye to him in the confident expectation that lie would soon be at his training in one of the camps. The most that can be said truthfully of the calm endurance of the women of the working class is that it is aided by a tem- peramental fatalism. Better-educated women face the issue with a more acute appreciation of its meaning. As their sensitiveness is deeper, so is their need for deter- mination greater. But nowhere can one see failure. We must quote, as a model of the sentiments of a woman who has "thought it all out "and showed no sign of shrinking, a letter from a wife to her husband which the Morning Post published on Wednesday, aptly heading it " Any Wife to Any Husband." It seems that the husband is a Territorial officer who offered himself for foreign service, and perhaps (if we may read between the lines) gave up some billet where he had a prospect of advancement on easy terms at home in order to take his chance in the trenches :-
"I am very glad you have signed the general service form indeed. I take it like this. No sacrifice is too great. If every one went on that principle, the war would soon be gloriously won. No one should consider themselves. If you respond to the appeals of those in authority, you can't do more. You have done your best, and you can safely leave the rest. I'm sure you are as dear as any one else's husband ; but I don't always fuss about it. If God sends you out, He will look after you ; and if Ho takes you, He will look after us. It's not your fault, but I realty don't think you are doing much good where you are at present. So, if you want your wife's advice or what she thinks, leave no stone un- turned, however boring, to respond and co-operate with those who are 'running the show,' and hang advancement, Sco. It isn't always the most loyal, brave, patriotic, &a., who come into the ' limelight,' and I don't care one spot what anyone else says or anything. The men I admire are the ones who do the un-showing jobs, the dirty jobs, the dull jobs, the ill-paid jobs, and such-like, with a cheerful face and no complaints. They are the truly noble, and their reward comes after."
This instance of a married man doing—doing with his wife's encouragement—what he might conceivably have said should be left to the young bachelors can be matched a million times over. It is a splendid reflection on the influence of family life that it is the married men who measure and accept their responsibilities with con- spicuous readiness. They have learned that a home is a thing worth fighting for, and they look beyond their own personal experience to the wider sweep of those questions which the war has raised, and say in their hearts that, if they can help to bring it about, no home shall be at the mercy of powerful and grandiose brigands in the world of the future as decent men mean to have it. One is almost tempted to say that these are the men who alone have an indefeasible qualification for a vote ; these are the men, however poor their homes may be, who have that stake in the country " of which it used to be fashionable for politicians to talk. And while we think of homes can we refrain from adding a special note of respect for those brave women in the Dominions who have seen their husbands depart for the war and alone keep the home against their return ? Many of the Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand soldiers are married. There must be women on lonely prairies, remote wheatlands, barren sheep-farms, who " run the show " with little help or even alone. They pass day after day without companionship. News is scant, letters are rare. No watcher in England has quite to equal the gallant patience which pulls a woman through an experience like that. Mr. Lloyd George said last Saturday that fifty thousand women were already working at munitions in Britain, but that in France there were five to ten times as many at work, and that in Germany there were half a million. It is not the fault of the women here that there have not been a million at work for many months. They would have rushed to the workshops as readily as they rushed to do hospital work or to give their lives in field hospitals in France or Serbia. The Englishwoman wants peace ; therefore she knows that we must win the basis of peace. Whatever the price may be, it must be paid. It is useless, as she well knows, to say " Peace " when there is no peace. Very different, happily for us, are her sentiments from those of the American pacificist mother about whose peace poem, " I didn't raise my son to be a soldier ! " we have written in another article. The English mother does not tell her son that he is absolved from the duty of defending his home. She expressly tells him that he must do it. And she recognizes that she will raise a wretched family indeed, spiritless and virtueless, if the boys are brought up to believe that there is nothing good in sacrifice, nothing to emulate in her own devotion, no spiritual profit in risking all for an ideal. Her variation of the song would certainly be—" I didn't raise my son to be a shirker "
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