Women and War Work

The organizing ability and the common sense way in which our women in voluntary organization, quite rapidly, themselves decided what organizations were unnecessary and merely duplicating others, and refused to help them, so that they died out quite quickly, roused admiration, and the war has educated vast numbers of women in organization and executive ability. Women who never in their lives organized anything, and never kept an account properly, are doing all kinds of useful work. One nice middle-aged lady whose War Savings Association accounts were being kept wrongly, or rather were not really being kept at all, when told they must be done fully and correctly by one of our National Committee representatives, said, "Oh, but you see, I never did anything but crochet before the war"; but we have succeeded in making even the crochet ladies keep accounts and do wonderful things.

In the great world of mechanics and engineering, women are doing a wonderful amount of work and, there is no doubt, will remain in certain departments after the war. One danger there is in the women's attitude—so many of our women have learned one branch of work very quickly, that there probably will be a tendency to believe that anything can be learned as easily. There are only certain departments of mechanics that can be learned in a few months' time, and women will probably go on doing these. Such work as theirs in optical munitions, has shown their very special aptitude for it and in law-making, etc., they will be used more and more. Women have successfully done tool-setting and can go on with that. The training for civil and mechanical engineering is long, but there will be, if women are keen and will train, plenty of opportunity for them in peace-time occupations in civil, mechanical or electrical branches in connection with municipal, sanitary and household questions and in laundries, farms, etc. The women architects and these women could very well co-operate closely.

Women clerks and secretaries will remain largely after the war. Fewer men will want these posts as we are convinced there will be big movements among our men to more active work, to the land and to the Dominions overseas.

Women on the land will in numbers stay there, and there is a distinct movement among women with capital to go in for farming, market gardening, bee-keeping, poultry-keeping, etc., still more.

The war has made more of our fathers and mothers realize the right of their daughters to education and training, and there are very few parents in our country now, who think a girl needs to know nothing very practical, and has no need to go in for a profession. Our women's colleges have more students than ever and the war has done great things in breaking down these old conventional ideas. The war, in fact, has shaken the very foundations of the old Victorian beliefs in the limited sphere of women to atoms. Our sphere is now very much more what every human being's sphere is and ought to be—the place and work in which our capacity, ability or genius finds its fullest vent—and there is no need to worry about restricting women or anyone else to particular spheres—if they cannot do it, they cannot fill the sphere, and that test decides. The dear old Victorian dugouts grow fewer and fewer in number, but we never must forget that the great powers of women have not come in a night, miraculously, in the war. They are the result of long years of patient work before, and we women, who have had these great opportunities, must see to it that we nobly carry on the traditions of teaching and training and qualifying ourselves for service, bequeathed to us from older generations.

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 instituted 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.

Massachusetts 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.

CHAPTER XIV

RECONSTRUCTION

—RUDYARD KIPLING.

—W. BLAKE.

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 shields.

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 worship of might, of belief that war paid, and was in itself good, that there was no conscience higher than the state. They even worship God as a sort of tribal God whom they call upon to work with them—not a question as to whether they are on God's side—no—an assertion that God 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 nobler, 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 passengers 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 substitute 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, masses 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 finishing financially sound, and the man or woman who saves now and invests is one of our soundest reconstructors.

In the readjustments in industry that must come there will be temporary displacements, and the money invested will be invaluable to those affected. In our great task of reorganizing industries, of renovating and repairing, of building up new works and adding to our productiveness, finance is all-important. We shall need large sums for the development of our industry, for the transferring of war work back to peace pursuits, for the opening up of new industries and work, for the development of trade abroad and the selfish using up of resources that could be conserved, makes the work harder—might even, if extravagantly large, cripple us seriously at the end of this struggle.

The sacrifices of our men can achieve military victory, but weakness and self-indulgence at home can take the fruits of their victories away.

Those who are working and saving in our War Savings Movement are so convinced of its value, not only to the state, but to the individual, and for the character of our people, that they have expressed the very strongest conviction that it should go on after the War, and it will probably remain in our reconstruction.

We have also urged the wisdom of saving for the children's education and for dots for daughters, so that our young women may have some money in emergencies, or something of their own on marriage, and both of these are being done.

The great problem of education bulks very large in our reconstruction schemes. A new Education Bill for England and Wales has been prepared by Mr. Fisher—and his appointment is in itself a sign of our new attitude. He is Minister of Education and is really an educationist, having been Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield University when given the appointment. His Bill puts an end to that stigma on English education, the half-time system in Lancashire, and raises the age for leaving school to what it has been in Scotland for some years—sixteen years of age. It provides greater opportunities for secondary and technical training and improves education in every way. Its passage, or the passage of a still better Bill, is essential for any real work in reconstruction.

There are other schemes of education being planned and considered, and women are working with men on the education committee of the Ministry of Reconstruction.

The land question is all-important in reconstruction. We have fixed a minimum price for wheat for five years, as well as minimum wages for the labourers on land, men and women, and we have schemes and land for the settlement of soldiers. It is safe to predict that agriculture will be better looked after than it was before the war, and that we have learned a valuable lesson on food production, and the value of being more self-supporting.

There are people who talk airily and foolishly of "revolutions after the war"—of great labour troubles, of exorbitant and impossible demands, of irreconcilable quarrels. These people are themselves the creators and begettors of trouble, and mischievous in the highest degree. They belong, though they are much less attractive, to the same category as the person who tells you that the moral regeneration of the world is coming from this great war.

The "revolutionists" have to learn that there is no need to have any such crises happen, that they can only happen if we are foolish beyond belief and conception—for we have learned in this war how great and ample is the common meeting ground of all of us, how impossible it is for anyone to believe that we, who have fought together, suffered and lost together, while our men have died together, cannot find in consideration of claims enough common sense and wisdom to prevent any such disaster.

And one wonders where the people are going to be found who are going to be so unjust to the workers as to provide any reason for such dangers to be feared, for we know one thing in the war, that in the trenches, on the sea, behind the trenches and carrying on at home, the workers have done the greater part—and they, in their turn, know all others have borne their share. Out of such common knowledge and the consciousness that the practical work of democracy is to raise its people more and more, we shall have not revolution, but evolution of the best kind. And the moral regeneration of the world will come if we reconstruct the one thing that matters most and that is fundamental to all—ourselves—and it will not come if we do not. When one has said everything there is to be said of schemes and hopes of reconstruction—about the schemes for better homes, and a great housing scheme is wisely one of the foundation schemes of our reconstruction, for which plans are now being prepared, about schemes for the care of children, about schemes for endowment of motherhood, which are exercising the minds of many of our women, you are back again to the individual. When you think of education schemes, and schemes for teaching national service to the young, of work to teach care and thrift, you are back again to the problem of creating character.

When you go into the great world of industry and its problems, of care of the workers in health and sickness, of securing justice and full opportunities, of developing and wisely using our resources, again you return to the individual.

When you want to make the art and beauty of life accessible to all, you come back to the question as to the individual's desire for it and appreciation of it.

Schemes in theory may be perfect—reconstruction may be planned without a flaw—but what does that help if we as individuals are blind and selfish?

The regeneration of the world cannot come from the sacrifice of our men alone, or even of some of us at home. The few may save countries and do great things, but the work of reconstruction rests on everybody. Nations are made up of individuals, and a nation cannot hope for moral and social regeneration except through individual self-denial, self-sacrifice and service.

It is in our own hearts and our own minds that the great task of reconstruction must be done.

The greatest task of reconstruction for most of us is to make all our actions worthy of our highest self—to bring to the problems that confront us, not one detached and prejudiced bit of us, but the whole mind and spirit of ourselves—the best of us always in unity.

That is life's greatest task, and calls for all we have to give, and all we are. There lies true reconstruction and the hope of all the world.

APPENDIX

American Women's War Relief Fund, 123 Victoria Street, London, S.W. 1.

Association of Infant Consultation and Schools for Mothers, 4 Tavistock Square, London, W.C. 1.

British Women's Hospital, Bond Street, London, W. 1.

Glove Waistcoat Society, 75 Chancery Lane, E.C. 4.

Ministry of Food, Mrs. Pember Reeves, Mrs. C.S. Peel, Grosvenor House, W. 1.

National Federation of Women's Workers.

Women's Trade Union League, 34 Mecklenburgh Square, W.C. 1.

National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies.

Scottish Women's Hospitals, 62 Oxford Street, W.C. 1.

Women's Interests Committee, 62 Oxford Street, W.C.I.

National War Savings Committee, Salisbury Square, E.C. 4.

National Union of Women Workers (Women Patrols), Parliament Mansions, Victoria Street, S.W.I.

Queen Mary's Needlework Guild, St. James Palace, S.W.I.

National Food Economy League, 3 Woodstock Street, Oxford Street, W.C.I.

Prisoners of War, Help Committee, 4 Thurloe Place, Brompton Road, W.

Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, Devonshire House, W. 1.

Women's Branch, Food Production Department, Board of Agriculture, 72 Victoria Street, S.W.I.

Women's Service Bureau, L.S.W.S., 58 Victoria Street, S.W. 1.

Women's National Land Service Corps, 50 Upper Baker Street, W. 1.

Women Police Service, St. Stephens House, Westminster, S.W.I.

Young Women's Christian Association, 25 George Street, Hanover Square, W. 1.

V.A.D., Lady Ampthill, Devonshire House, W. 1.

MINISTRY OF MUNITIONS

PUBLICATIONS OF HEALTH OF MUNITION WORKERS' COMMITTEE

The following Memoranda have been prepared by the Committee and issued:

No. 1—Sunday Labour.

No. 2—Welfare Supervision.

No. 3—Industrial Canteens.

No. 4—Employment of Women.

No. 5—Hours of Work.

No. 6—Canteen Construction and Equipment (Appendix to No. 3).

No. 7—Industrial Fatigue and Its Causes. No. 8—Special Industrial Diseases.

No. 9—Ventilation and Lighting of Munition Factories and Workshops.

No. 10—Sickness and Injury.

No. 11—Investigation of Workers' Food and Suggestions as to Dietary. (Report by Leonard E. Hill, F.R.S.)

No. 12—Statistical Information Concerning Output in Relation to Hours of Work. (Report by H.M. Vernon, M.D.)

No. 13—Juvenile Employment.

No. 14—Washing Facilities and Baths.

No. 15—The Effect of Industrial Conditions Upon Eyesight.

No. 16—Medical Certificates for Munition Workers.

also, Feeding the Munition Worker.

Published by H.M. STATIONERY OFFICE,

London, W.C.

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Books by Members of the University Lecturers

A significant proof of the growth of the Association's influence in recent years is afforded by the fact that our Secretary, Mr. G. Arnold Shaw, has been enabled to enter the publishing field successfully. We reverse thus the plan of campaign of the ordinary lecture bureau which is usually impressed with the possibilities of a man who has won fame as an author rather than as a lecturer; we discover that a man is a first rate lecturer and then we proceed to make him an author—also of the front rank as the reviews quoted below show.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

By IAN C. HANNAH, F.S.A.

By I.B. STOUGHTON HOLBORN

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

The interest of these books depend not merely upon the interesting personality of the famous lecturer and the equally fascinating personalities of his two brothers, but also on the exquisite literary style to which the critics have paid such eloquent testimony.

By JOHN COWPER POWYS AND LLEWELLYN POWYS

By THEODORE FRANCIS POWYS

ESSAYS AND CRITICISM

The essays contained in the following books deal with the best lecture subjects of our various members; they are specially recommended to those who wish to pursue further the study outlined in our lecture courses.

By I.B. STOUGHTON HOLBORN

By JOHN COWPER POWYS

FICTION

Critics of literature seldom succeed as creative artists and so it is specially remarkable that the highest authorities give even more unqualified praise to the fiction of our members than to their essays. We need not emphasize further our lack of appreciation for the literary value of "best-sellers"; our aim has not been to produce topical tracts for the times but novels that will survive. It is more to us that competent critics should compare Mr. Powys' fiction to that of Hardy, Dostoievsky and Emily Bronte than that the public should buy it by the hundred thousand. Those who are not convinced that "you can place 'Wood and Stone' unhesitatingly at the side of Dostoievsky's masterpieces" should reflect that this is not the over-enthusiasm of "America's newest Publisher" but the verdict of a London publisher who has long held a pre-eminent position; it is therefore peculiarly satisfactory to point out that our first novel "Wood and Stone" was

FICTION

HISTORY AND TRAVEL

POETRY

THE WAR