In all the talk and thought about what's to be, noo that the war's
over with and done, I hear a muckle of different opinions aboot what
the women wull be doing. They're telling me that women wull ne'er be
the same again; that the war has changed them for good--or for bad!--
and that they'll stay the way the war has made them.
Weel, noo, let's be talking that over, and thinking about it a wee
bit. It's true that with the war taking the men richt and left, women
were called on to do new things; things they'd ne'er thought about
before 1914. In Britain it was when the shells ran short that we first
saw women going to work in great numbers. It was only richt that they
should. The munitions works were there; the laddies across the Channel
had to have guns and shells. And there were not men enough left in
Britain to mak' all that were needed.
I ken fine that all that has brocht aboot a great change. When a
lassie's grown used to the feel of her ain siller, that's she's earned
by the sweat of her brow, it's not in reason that she should be the
same as one that has never been awa' frae hame. She'll be more
independent. She'll ken mair of the value of siller, and the work that
goes to earning it. And she'll know that she's got it in her to do
real work, and be really paid for doing it.
In Britain our women have the vote noo' they got so soon as the war
showed that it was impossible and unfair to keep it frae them longer.
It wasna smashing windows and pouring treacle into letter boxes that
won it for them, though. It wasna the militant suffragettes that
persuaded Parliament to give women the vote. It was the proof the
women gave that in time of war they could play their part, just as men
do.
But now, why should we be thinking that, when the war's over, women
will be wanting tae go on just as they did while it was on? Would it
not be just as sensible to suppose that all the men who crossed the
sea to fight for Britain would prefer to stay in uniform the rest of
their lives?
Of coorse there'll be cases where women wall be thinking it a fine
thing to stay at work and support themselves. A lassie that's earned
her siller in the works won't feel like going back to washing dishes
and taking orders about the sweeping and the polishing frae a cranky
mistress. I grant you that.
Oh, aye--I ken there'll be fine ladies wall be pointing their fingers
at me the noo and wondering does Mrs. Lauder no have trouble aboot the
maids! Weel, maybe she does, and maybe she doesn't. I'll let her tell
aboot a' that in a hook of her own if you'll but persuade her to write
one. I wish you could! She'd have mair of interest to tell you than I
can.
But I've thocht a little aboot all this complaining I hear about
servants. Have we not had too many servants? Were we not, before the
war, in the habit of having servants do many things for us we micht
weel have done for ourselves? The plain man--and I still feel that it
is a plain man's world that we maun live in the noo--needs few
servants. His wife wull do much of the work aboot the hoose herself,
and enjoy doing it, as her grandmither did in the days when housework
was real work.
I've heard women talking amang themselves, when they didn't know a man
was listening tae them, aboot their servants--at hame, and in America.
They're aye complaining.
"My dear!" one will say. "Servants are impossible these days! It's
perfectly absurd! Here's Maggie asking me for fifteen dollars a week!
I've never paid anything like that, and I won't begin now! The idea!"
"I know--isn't it ridiculous? What do they do with their money? They
get their board and a place to sleep. Their money is all clear profit
--and yet they're never satisfied. During the war, of course, we were
at their mercy--they could get work any time they wanted it in a
munitions plant----."
And so on. These good ladies think that girls should work for whatever
their mistresses are willing to pay. And yet I canna see why a girl
should be a servant because some lady needs her. I canna see why a
lassie hasna the richt to better herself if she can. And if the ladies
cannot pay the wages the servants ask, let them do their own work! But
do not let them complain of the ingratitude and the insolence of girls
who only ask for wages such as they have learned they can command in
other work.
But to gae back to this whole question of what women wull be doing,
noo that the war's over. Some seem tae think that Jennie wall never be
willing to marry Andy the noon, and live wi' him in the wee hoose he
can get for their hame. She got Andy's job, maybe. And she's been
making more money than ever Andy did before he went awa'. Here's what
they're telling me wull happen.
Andy'll come hame, all eager to see his Jenny, and full of the idea of
marrying her at once. He'll have been thinking, whiles he was out
there at the front, and in hospital--aye, he'd do mair thinking than
usual aboot it when he was in hospital--of the wee hoose he and Jennie
wad be living in, when the war was over. He'd see himself kissing
Jennie gude-bye in the morn, as he went off to work, and her waiting
for him when he came hame at nicht, and waving to him as soon as she
recognized him.
And he'd think, too, sometimes, of Jennie wi' a bairn of theirs in her
arms, looking like her, but wi' Andy's nose maybe, or his chin. They'd
be happy thoughts--they'd be the sort of thoughts that sustained Andy
and millions like him, frae Britain, and America, and Canada, and
Australia, and everywhere whence men went forth to fight the Hun.
Weel, here'd be Andy, coming hame. And they're telling me Jennie wad
be meeting him, and giving him a big, grimy hand to shake.
"Kiss me, lass," Andy wad say, reaching to tak' her in his arms.
And she'd gie a toss of her pretty head. "Oh, I've no time for
foolishness like that the noo!" she'd tell him, for answer.
"No time? What d'ye mean, lass?"
"I'll be late at the works if ye dinna let me go--that's what I mean."
"But--dinna ye love me any more'?"
"Oh, aye--I love ye weel enough, Andy. But I canna be late at the
works, for a' that!"
"To the de'il wi' the works! Ye'll be marrying be as soon as may be,
and then there'll be no more works for ye, lass--"
"That's only a rumor! I'm sticking to my job. Get one for yourself,
and then maybe I'll talk o' marrying you--and may be no!"
"Get me a job? I've got one--the one you've been having!"
"Aye--but it's my job the noo, and I'll be keeping it. I like earning
my siller, and I'm minded to keep on doing it, Andy."
And off she goes, and Andy after her, to find she's told the truth,
and that they'll not turn her off to make way for him.
"We'd like to have you back, Andy," they'll tell him. "But if the
women want to stay, stay they can."
Well, I'll be asking you if it's likely Jenny will act so to her boy,
that's hame frae the wars? Ye'll never mak' me think so till you've
proved it. Here's the picture I see.
I see Jenny getting more and more tired, and waiting more and more
eagerly for Andy to come hame. She's a woman, after a', d'ye ken, and
a young one. And there are some sorts of work women were not meant or
made to do, save when the direst need compels. So, wi' the ending of
the war, and its strain, here's puir Jennie, wondering how long she
must keep on before her Andy comes to tak' care of her and let her
rest.
And--let me whisper something else. We think it shame whiles, to talk
o' some things. But here's Nature, the auld mither of all of us. She's
a purpose in the world, has that auld mither--and it's that the race
shall gae on. And it's in the heart and the soul, the body and the
brain, of Jennie that she's planted the desire that her purpose shall
be fulfilled.
It's bairns Jenny wants, whether or no she kens that. It's that helps
to mak' her so eager for Andy to be coming back to her. And when she
sees him, at long last, I see her flinging herself in his arms, and
thanking God wi' her tears that he's back safe and sound--her man, the
man she's been praying for and working for.
There'll be problems aboot women, dear knows. There are a' the lassies
whose men wull no come back, like Andy--whose lads lie buried in a
foreign grave. It's not for me to talk of the sad problem of the
superfluous woman--the lassie whose life seems to be over when it's
but begun. These are affairs the present cannot consider properly. It
will tak' time to show what wall be happening and what maun be done.
But I'm sure that no woman wull give up the opportunity to mak' a
hame, to bring bairns into the world, for the sake of continuing the
sort of freedom she's had during the war. It wad be like cutting off
her nose to do that.
Oh, I ken fine that men wull have to be more reasonable than they've
been, sometimes, in the past. Women know more than they did before the
war opened the gates of industry to them. They'll not be put upon, the
way I'm ashamed to admit they sometimes were in the old days. But I
think that wull be a fine thing for a' of us. Women and men wull be
comrades more; there'll be fewer helpless lassies who canna find their
way aboot without a man to guide them. But men wull like that--I can
tell ye so, though they may grumble at the first.
The plain man wull have little use for the clinging vine as a wife.
He'll want the sort of wife some of us have been lucky enough to have
even before the war. I mean a woman who'll tak' a real note of his
affairs, and be ready to help him wi' advice and counsel; who'll
understand his problems, and demand a share in shaping their twa
lives. And that's the effect I'm thinking the war is maist likely to
have upon women. It wall have trained them to self-reliance and to the
meeting of problems in a new way.
And here's anither thing we maun be remembering. In the auld days a
lassie, if she but would, could check up the lad that was courtin'
her. She could tell, if she'd tak' the trouble to find oot, what sort
he was--how he stud wi' those who knew him. She could be knowing how
he did at work, or in business, and what his standing was amang those
who knew him in that way. It was different when a man was courtin' a
lassie. He could tell little about her save what he could see.
Noo that's been changed. The war's been cruelly hard on women as weel
as on men. It's weeded them oot. Only the finest could come through
the ordeals untouched--that was true of the women at hame as of the
men on the front line. And now, when a lad picks out a lassie he's no
longer got the excuses he once had for making a mistake.
He can be finding oot how she did her work while he was awa' at the
war. He can be telling what those who worked wi' her thought of her,
and whether she was a good, steady worker or not. He can make as many
inquiries aboot her as she can aboot him, and sae they'll be on even
terms, if they're both sensible bodies, before they start.
And there's this for the lassies who are thinking sae muckle of their
independence. They're thinking, perhaps, that they can pick and choose
because they've proved they can earn their livings and keep
themselves. Aye, that's true enough. But the men can do more picking
and choosing than before, too!
But doesna it a' come to the same answer i' the end--that it wall tak'
more than even this war to change human nature? I think that's so.
It's unfashionable, I suppose, to talk of love. They'll be saying I'm
an auld sentimentalist if I remind you of an old saying--that it's
love that makes the world go round. But it's true. And love wall be
love until the last trumpet is sounded, and it wall make men and
women, lads and lassies, act i' the same daft way it always has--thank
God!
Love brings man and woman together--makes them attractive, one to the
ither. Wull some matter of economics keep them apart? Has it no been
proved, ever since the beginning of the world, that when love comes in
nothing else matters? To be sure--to be sure.
It's a strange thing, but it's aye the matters that gie the maist
concern to the prophets of evil that gie me the greatest comfort when
I get into an argument or a discussion aboot the war and its effects
upon humanity. They're much concerned about the bairns. They tell me
they've got out of hand these last years, and that there's no doing
anything wi' them any more. Did those folk see the way the Boy Scouts
did, I wonder?
Everywhere those laddies were splendid. In Britain they were
messengers; they helped to guard the coasts; they did all sorts of
work frae start to finish. They released thousands of men who wad have
been held at hame except for them.
And it was the same way in America. There I helped, as much as I
could, in selling Liberty Bonds. And I saw there the way the Boy
Scouts worked. They sold more bonds than you would have thought
possible. They helped me greatly, I know. I'd be speaking at some
great meeting. I'd urge the people to buy--and before they could grow
cold and forget the mood my words had aroused in them, there'd be a
boy in uniform at their elbows, holding a blank for them to sign.
And the little girls worked at sewing and making bandages. I dinna ken
just what these folk that are so disturbed aboot our boys and girls
wad be wanting. Maybe they're o' the sort who think bairns should be
seen and not heard. I'm not one of those, maself--I like to meet a
bairn that's able and willing to stand up and talk wi' me. And all I
can say is that those who are discouraged about the future of the race
because of the degeneration of childhood during the war do not know
what they're talking about.
Women and children! Aye, it's well that we've talked of them and
thought of them, and fought for them. For the war was fought for
them--fought to make it a better world for them. Men did not go out
and suffer and die for the sake of any gain that they could make. They
fought that the world might be a better one for children yet unborn to
live in, and for the bairns they'd left behind to grow up in.
Was there, I wonder, any single thing that told more of the difference
between the Germans and the allies than the way both treated women and
children? The Germans looked on their women as inferior beings. That
was why they could be guilty of such atrocities as disgraced their
armies wherever they fought. They were well suited with the Turks for
their own allies. The place that women hold in a country tells you
much about it; a land in which women are not rated high is not one in
which I'd want to live.
And if women wull be better off in Britain and America than they were,
even before the war, that's one of the ways in which the war has
redeemed itself and helped to pay for itself. I think they wull--but
I've no patience wi' those who talk as if men and women had different
interests, and maun fight it out to see which shall dominate.
They're equal partners, men and women. The war has shown us that; has
proved to us men how we can depend upon our women to tak' over as much
of our work as maun be when the need comes. And that's a great thing
to have learned. We all pray there need be no more wars; we none of us
expect a war again in our time. But if it comes one of the first
things we wull do wull be to tak' advantage of what we've learned of
late about the value and the splendor of our women.