Women and War Work Part 17

One thing, too, despite the war tasks and strain, we have not lost sight of the fact that the great fundamental tasks of keeping the house, guarding and seeing to the children must be well done. Just for a little, some of our tasks of child welfare had fewer workers, but many of the women realized the value of all these tasks as supreme, and took up the work freely. Child welfare work in particular the Suffrage woman organized and worked, Glasgow Suffragists taking on the visiting of babies, always done there, in a whole ward of the city, and in other towns they started Day Nurseries.

Lord Rhondda at the Local Government Board inst.i.tuted Baby week and we hope to found a Ministry of Health very soon. So in the War we have realized even more vividly how great and valuable and important these tasks of women are. A very great amount of work for child welfare has been done by our women in the war, and our infant death rate is going still lower.

The war has done a great service in drawing women of all the Allied Nations together--a service whose greatness and magnitude it is not easy to fully realize. French and English men and women know so much more of each other now. Our hospitals in France, our Canteens for French Soldiers, as well as our own, our women and the French women working side by side in our army clerical departments and ordnance depots in France, the Belgians and French who are among us in such large numbers, make us known to each other. In Serbia we have made many friends and in Italy and Russia and Romania, all links for the future, and helps to wider knowledge and understanding. It is on understanding the hopes of the world rest, and we women have a great part to play in that.

With America our link has always been very great and all the help, and gifts, and service America gave us before it entered the war, have been very precious to us. American women have given Hospitals and ambulances and everything possible in the way of succour and of service, and have died with our women in nursing service, as the men have in our ranks.

Ma.s.sachusetts sent a nurse to France, Miss Alice Fitzgerald, in memory of Edith Cavell, which shows the unity of your feeling and ours on that tragic execution, and her work under our War Office in Queen Alexandra's Imperial Army Nursing Service with the British Expeditionary Force, as well as the work of all the American nurses we have had helping us, is another link in the great chain. Our own great Commonwealth of Nations are nearer to each other than ever before.

There were even people among us who thought a little as the enemy did that our Dominions would not stand by us--stupid and blind people.

It is their fight as well as ours--the common fight of all free peoples, and all our united nations stand together, including those who only a few years ago were fighting us as brave foes.

We have learned so much in great ways and in small ways, in economies and in the care of all our resources, too. We women are more careful in Britain now. We save food, and grow more, and produce more, and maids and mistresses work together to economize and help. We gather our waste paper and sell it or give it to the Red Cross for their funds, give our bottles and our rags, waste no food and save and lend our money. We could not have been called a thrifty nation before the war--we are much more thrifty now, in many ways, though there are still things we could learn.

In the Women's Army and in so much of our work we are learning discipline and united service--learning what it means to be proud of your corps and to feel the uniform you wear or the badge is something you must be worthy of--and it goes back to being worthy of your own flag and of the ideals for which we all stand in these days.

And the young wives who are married and left behind, who bear their children with their husbands far away in danger, who have had no real homes yet, but who wait and hope, they are very wonderful in their courage and pluck--and, most of all, everywhere, our women, like our men, wisely refuse to be dreary. There are enough secret dark hours, but in our work we carry on cheerfully, the women know the soldiers'

slogan, "Cheero," and to Britain and to "somewhere on the fronts," the same message goes and comes.

Of the great spiritual worths and values, it has brought to women very much what it has brought to men. All eternal things are more real, all eternal truths more clearly perceived. When the whole foundations of life rock under us, in where "there is no change, neither shadow of turning," the heart rests more surely in these days.

It has brought us agonies and tears, weariness and pain, self-denial and great sorrows, but it has brought such riches of self-sacrifice, such service, such love, has shown us such peaks of revelation and vision to which the soul and the nation can attain, that we count ourselves rich, though so much has gone.

To think of what we might have been if we had refused to bear our share--to look back on the evils of luxury and selfishness that were creeping over us, makes us feel that we may have lost some things, but "what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul." And we have saved our soul. The souls of the nations travail in a new birth through a night of agony and tears. The purposes being worked out are so great, that it is difficult for us to see them with our limited human vision, but in great moments of insight we do see, and having seen, go back to our tasks in the light of that vision, knowing that though now we fight in dim shadows with monstrous and awful evils of mankind's creation, the day is coming nearer and the light will come.

An age is dying and a new age comes, and what it shall be only the men and women of the world can answer.

RECONSTRUCTION

"The tumult and the shouting dies-- The captains and the Kings depart-- Still stands thine ancient sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart.

Lord G.o.d of Hosts; be with us yet, Lest we forget, lest we forget."

--RUDYARD KIPLING.

"We shall not cease from mental fight, Nor shall our sword sleep in our hand, Till we have built Jerusalem, In England's green and pleasant land."

--W. BLAKE.

CHAPTER XIV

RECONSTRUCTION

And what is to come after? The first and the last and the greatest thing to do is to win the war and to get the right settlement. Unless we finish this struggle with the nations free, there can be no real reconstruction. The greatest work of reconstruction--the fundamental work--will be at the peace table. Those who are giving everything and doing everything to gain victory for the Allies, are the true reconstructors of the world.

The first great task of reconstruction is victory and the second is right peace settlements.

We cannot say that anything we can do will make future peace certain, but we can see that just and righteous settlements are made, so that the foundations are laid that ought to ensure peace in the future.

There is no real peace possible while injustices exist.

There is no real peace possible while evil and good contend for mastery, and the spiritual conflicts of man are, and will be, as terrible as any physical conflicts. While mankind stands where it does now, it is well that against corruption of spirit and thought, we can use our bodies as s.h.i.+elds.

The fact that we have had to fight Germany physically, shows clearly that spiritually and mentally we were unable to make them see truth and honour, and the meaning of freedom, and that the ideal of peace made no real appeal to them.

They built up in their nation great thought forces of aggression, of belief in militarism, of wors.h.i.+p of might, of belief that war paid, and was in itself good, that there was no conscience higher than the state. They even wors.h.i.+p G.o.d as a sort of tribal G.o.d whom they call upon to work with them--not a question as to whether they are on G.o.d's side--no--an a.s.sertion that G.o.d is on theirs.

That was their thought--and the thoughts of the other nations were bent on problems of freedom and growing democracy, of widening opportunities, of political and commercial interest, were, on the whole, the vaguely good thoughts of evolving democracies (with notable exceptions), but not the clear powerful thoughts needed to fight effectually those of Germany in the fields of intellect and spirit.

People did not see the full evil of Germany's thought--it was tied up with so much that was efficient and good and able, and we were only half articulate as to our own beliefs, and not even thoroughly clear or agreed about them, and Germany considered us slack and inefficient, and believed we might even be induced to consent to seeing Europe overrun and doing nothing. We did not believe, despite warning, that any nation thought as Germany did and we seemed, in their minds, to be people to be dominated and swept over.

One interesting fact to note is that Germany, despite its boasted knowledge of psychology, did not realise that England possesses a definite sub-conscious mind which always guides its actions. The sub-conscious mind of England is a desire for fair play, for justice, and a very definite sense of freedom. England is the creator of self-government and its sub-conscious mind, built up for centuries, is a very definite and real thing.

The sub-conscious mind of Germany, filled with these dominating ideas of power and _Weltmacht_ and militarism, goes on, once set free, to its logical end, and it seems clearer and clearer that there is no real end to this struggle till we make the mind and soul of Germany realize its crimes and mistakes, till they are sane again and talk the A, B, C of civilization. The real reconstruction of the world begins there.

That end reached and settlements justly done, we may consider schemes for a League of Nations and practical possibilities of work in international organizations to prevent disputes leading to war.

The work of reconstruction must be international, as well as national, but the people who do, and will do, the best international work are the people who do the best national work. The individuals who are not prepared to spend time and service and effort to make their own country better and n.o.bler, are going to do nothing for internationalism that is worth doing. The heart that finds nothing to love and work for in its neighbour is the heart that has nothing to bring to the whole world.

Again, there must be reparation by the enemy. We cannot reconstruct this world rightly if we do not enforce justice. A nation that has broken every international and human law is a nation that must be made to pay for its crimes as far as human justice can secure it.

Our six thousand murdered merchant seamen, the thousands of pa.s.sengers they have killed, the civilians they have bombed, are marshalled against them, and the horrors of their frightfulness, deliberately planned and carried out against the peoples they have held in bondage, their refusal to even feed properly their prisoners and captive people--are we to be told to reconstruct a world without reparation for these and their other crimes?

We shall have a reconstructed world with right foundations, only when the nations know that justice is throned internationally, and that every crime is to be judged and punished. There can be no new world without living faith, without real religion. A cheap and sentimental humanitarism is no subst.i.tute for real faith--philosophies that seem adequate in ordinary times are poor things when the soul of man stands stripped of all its trappings and faces death and suffering and watches agonies. Then the abiding eternal soul knows its own reality and its oneness with the Divine and eternal, and the sacrifice of Christ is a real living thing--and in the men's sacrifice they are very near to Him.

So the Churches are being tested, too, in this great crisis, and in a reconstructed world we shall want Churches that carry the message of Christianity with a clearer and firmer voice, but that is the task of all believers. We cannot cast the duty of making the Church a living witness on our priests alone--it is our work, and unless our faith goes into everything we do, it is no use. People who profess a faith, and carefully shut it up in a compartment of their lives, so that it has no real connection with their work, are worse than honest doubters--because they betray what they profess.

So reconstruction rests upon great spiritual tasks and values, and upon the willingness and ability of the nations to carry these out.

In our country, our political parties are going to be changed and reconstructed. The Labour Party has already made a big appeal to "brain and hand workers," and has announced its scheme of re-organization.

One definite result of the war in the minds of the people of our country is the definite mental discarding of state socialism of the bureaucratic kind as a conceivable system of government. We have seen bureaucracy at work to a great extent, and shall undoubtedly have to continue control in many ways after peace comes, but we do not like it. Socialism will have to go on to new lines of thought and development if it wishes to achieve anything--and the most interesting thought and schemes are on the lines of Guild Socialism.

How the great Liberal and Unionist Parties will emerge, we cannot say--but this we know, they will be different. We have a new electorate, more men and the women, and the opinion and needs of the women will undoubtedly affect our political reconstruction. Most of us, in the war, have entirely ceased to care for party; even the most fierce of partisans have changed, and the "party appeal," in itself, will be of little account in our country.

I feel sure we shall scrutinize measures and men and programmes more carefully, and the work of educating our women will be part of the women's great tasks in reconstruction.

Our ability to reconstruct and renew rests fundamentally upon our financial condition--even the power to make the best peace terms rests upon it. Crippled countries cannot stand out for the best terms, so finance is all-important.

The democratic nature of our loans is all-important, too. We have had people suggesting that these loans would be repudiated--a suggestion that is not only absurd, but is humorous when one realizes that about ten million of our people have invested in them. To get a House of Commons elected that would repudiate these loans would be a difficult task.

The widespread nature of the loans is sound for the people and the Government, and will help us not only to win the war, but, what is still more important, "to win the peace." We have in this struggle paid more and better wages to our people than ever before, conditions have been improved, ma.s.ses of our people have led a fuller existence than ever before. We want to make these and still better conditions permanent. We cannot do that by a military victory only--we can only do it by finis.h.i.+ng financially sound, and the man or woman who saves now and invests is one of our soundest reconstructors.