GENERAL SERVANTS AND A GENERAL QUESTION
I have left till the last what to some people will be the dullest and
what is certainly the least spectacular of all the work done by the
women in France, but what is to me perhaps the most wonderful and
admirable of all. I mean that of the Domestic Staffs.
For there is something thrilling about driving wounded, something
eternally picturesque about nursing them, but there is no glamour about
being a general servant.... A general servant, year in, year out, and
with no wages at that, for I talk of the voluntary staffs, girls of
gentle birth and breeding who deliberately undertake to wash dishes and
clean floors and empty slops day after day. I think heroism can no
higher go, and I am not trying to be funny; I mean it.
All the voluntary camps I had seen, all the hostels, the rest stations,
and many hospitals, are staffed by voluntary domestic help; and the
girls they wait upon, the drivers and secretaries and such like, are
eager in recognition of them. But that seems to me about all the
recognition they do get; they get no "snappy pars," no photographs in
the picture papers, no songs are sung of them, no reward is theirs in
the shape of medal or ribbon, nothing but the sense of a dish properly
cleaned or rugs duly swept under. I consider that there ought to be a
special medal for girls who have slaved as general servants during the
war, without a thrill of romance to support them; a "Skivvy's Ribbon" as
one of them laughingly suggested to me when I propounded the idea.
Take, for example, the Headquarters of the British Red Cross, at the
Hotel Christol at Boulogne, to which I returned on my homeward way, as I
had come to it on landing. The staff, counting the Commissioner and
officials, the clerks, typists, secretaries, and Post Office girls,
amount to about a hundred and forty-five people, and the house staff
number seventeen and are all V.A.D.'s. The Hotel Christol is also the
headquarters for all Red Cross people going on leave or arriving
therefrom via Boulogne, and all have to report there; nearly all want a
meal, many want a bed.
The men-workers and many of the women, such as V.A.D. Commandants, etc.,
live out in billets in the town, but the manageress and her assistant,
the Post Office Commandant, the girl driver of the mail-car with her
orderly (these two girls drive about sixty miles daily with the mails),
the girls of the telephone exchange and the rest of the Post Office
girls, all "live in," and in addition to the casual Red Cross workers
who may appeal for a bed any time there are the relations of wounded who
have been put up there whenever possible, though now a hostel is being
opened in Boulogne for the purpose. All the people working in the house
and all Red Cross workers arriving by boat are entitled to take their
meals at the Christol, as are all Red Cross workers in Boulogne, both
officers and privates, and the average number of meals served is 2,500 a
week. Four or five girls act as waitresses in the dining-room, and three
are always in the pantry, which must never be left for a moment during
the day; so it will be seen that the headquarters of the Red Cross is a
sort of hotel, except that nobody pays.
There are French servants to do the roughest work, but the girls have
plenty to do without that. The house staff begin work at seven in the
morning; at seven-thirty in the evening they start to turn out the
forty-two offices, which they sweep and dust every day. They wash all
the tea-things (not the dinner-things), and clean all the silver and
glass, they make the beds and do all the waiting. A pretty good list of
occupations, is it not, carried out on such a huge scale?
The girls are well looked after, for it must not be forgotten that some
of them are not more than eighteen, and their parents in England have a
right to demand that these children should be at once guarded and
cheered. No Red Cross girl is allowed out after half-past nine in a
restaurant, and none is ever allowed to dine out unaccompanied by
another girl. But when a friend of a girl passes through Boulogne, then
it is permitted that she and another girl may go and dine with the
officer in question, always provided they are back by nine-thirty. For
superiors are merciful and human creatures these days, and there is
always the thought that the girl may never see that friend again. And
Heaven--and the superior--knows that these girls need and deserve a
little relaxation and enjoyment.
And would you not think that to girls who work as these do and behave so
well would at least be given the understanding and respect of all of us
who do so much less? Yet how often one hears careless remarks of censure
or--worse--of belittlement. That to other nations our ways may need
explaining is understandable, but we should indeed be ashamed that any
amongst ourselves fail in comprehension.
What do the French think of our women? That is a question that
inevitably arises in the mind of anyone who knows the differences in
French and English education. Let me show the thing as I think it is, by
means of a metaphor.
It is universally conceded that marriage is a more difficult proposition
than friendship, that it is more a test of affection to live under one
roof and share the daily commonplaces of life than it is to meet
occasionally when one can make a feast of the meeting. Yet this is not
to say that marriage is the less admirable state, but only to allow that
it is one requiring greater sacrifices, greater tact, and--greater
affection. Therefore, when it is admitted that the presence in France
for nearly four years of English soldiers, English civilians on
war-work, and the consequent erection of whole temporary townships for
their accommodation, is a greater test--if you will a greater
strain--for the Entente than if intercourse had been limited to an
occasional interchange of a handful of people, one is not saying
anything derogatory either to French hosts or English guests, but merely
frankly conceding that more depth of affection and understanding is
necessary than would otherwise have been the case. To superficial
relationships, superficial knowledge, but to the big partnerships of
life, complete understanding. And, if that is never quite possible in
this world, at least let the corner where knowledge cannot come be
filled by tolerance.
England is no longer on terms of mere friendly intercourse with France;
the bond is deeper, more indissoluble.... And as in marriage the closest
bond of all is the birth of children, so in this pact of nations the
greatest bond is the loss of children--lost for the same cause upon the
same soil....
With a bond as deep as this--a bond always acknowledged and given its
meed of recognition by the most thoughtful brains and sensitive
hearts--yet, as in marriage, there are bound to be minor irritations,
points, not of meeting, but of conflict. Trifles, indeed, these points,
compared with the magnitude of the bond which unites, but nevertheless
trifles which would be better adjusted than ignored.
In the first place, we must recognise that though the things which unite
us, our common ideals, our common needs, are far stronger than any
difference in our modes of thought, yet those differences exist, and
that, in marriage, it is often said that it is the little things which
count.... Heaven forbid that we should so lose sense of proportion as to
say it when the matter in hand is the marriage of nations, but
nevertheless it is well not entirely to forget it.... And, of all the
differences in customs between us, there is probably none more marked
than in our way of treating what is known--loosely and with considerable
banality--as the "sex-problem." This is not the place to discuss those
differences, though, as one who has known and loved France all her life,
I may mention that, personally, I see much to admire in the French
system and could wish that we emulated it, but that is neither here nor
there at the moment.
France has probably evolved for the happiness and welfare of her
womenkind the sort of life which suits best with their temperament and
circumstances. Women, like water, find their own level, and no one who
knows France, and knows the devotion, the business capacity, and the
good works of her women, imagines them to be the butterfly creatures
that English fancy used to paint them twenty or thirty years ago. As a
matter of fact, the present writer had occasion, two winters ago, to
make a close study of the varied scope of women's work in France--the
hospitals for training of _femmes du monde_, the schools like Le Foyer,
for the training of young girls of the upper classes to help their
poorer sisters, etc., etc., all works carried on unostentatiously long
before the war broke upon us and proved their usefulness. The
"butterfly" Frenchwoman underwent, before the war, a far more serious
social training than did the happy-go-lucky English girl, and was better
equipped in consequence, with a knowledge of economic conditions, than
the untrained Englishwoman could be.
But we too have our quality, and I rather think it is to be found in the
greater freedom which we are allowed. We were not so well trained, but
freedom stepped into the place of custom, and gave the necessary
attitude of mind--that unprejudiced, untrammelled attitude which is
essential to the quick grasping of a fresh _metier_. That is where our
method--or, if you prefer it, our lack of method--helped us, even as
their training helped the French. And the French, with their
extraordinary facility of vision, do, I think, understand that we have
simply pushed our freedom to its logical and legitimate outcome, that we
could not be expected, after being accustomed, for many years past, to
be on terms of simple easy friendship with men as with our own sex,
above all, after working side by side with them since this war began, we
could not be expected to say that we could not work with them in France,
though we could in England, or that perhaps this girl would, and that
girl couldn't....
We naturally proceeded to act _en masse_ as we had acted individually,
to do on a large scale what had been done on a small, to manipulate
great bodies of women where before a few friends had worked together. In
every large body of persons there are bound to be one or two individuals
who fail to come up to the required standard, but that does not alter
the principle that what can safely be done in small quantities can
safely be done in large, provided the conditions are altered to scale.
And that is what we are doing, and what our Government is helping us to
do; that is what our Women's Army and our voluntary workers in France
are--the expression, on a large scale, of what bands of women have been
doing so successfully on a small scale since the beginning of the
war--helping, and even replacing the men. And just as, with our
peculiar training and mode of thought, it is possible for the average
Englishwoman to eliminate sex as a factor in the scheme of things, so it
is possible to eliminate it in greater masses. In other words, it is
perfectly possible, to men and girls brought up with the English method
of free friendly intercourse, to work side by side, to meet, to walk
together, and to remain--merely friends. Whether that is a good thing or
not is another point altogether, as it is whether it makes for charm in
a woman.... Certainly no woman in this world competes with a Frenchwoman
for charm. It is as recognised as an Englishwoman's complexion--and
considerably more lasting!
Probably it is only ourselves and the Americans among the races of the
world who could have instituted such an experiment as that of our
Women's Army, but there is among the nations one which is supreme in
"flair," in sympathy, and a certain ability to comprehend intellectually
what it might not understand emotionally, and that nation is France.
I am confident that it will never have to be said that when Englishwomen
sacrificed so much--and to a Frenchwoman one does not need to point out
what a sacrifice it is when a woman risks youth and looks in hard
unceasing work--that Frenchwomen failed to understand them or to
attribute motives to them other than those that have animated
themselves in their own labours throughout the war.
That it must sometimes look odd to them one knows so well; how can it be
otherwise? They see the girls, khaki-clad, out walking without
"Tommies," hear the sounds of music and dancing coming from the
recreation huts, where the girls are allowed to invite the men, and
_vice versa_. Yet, if you investigate, you will find out that they are
of an extraordinary simplicity, these girls and men, in their
intercourse, in their earnest dancing, taught them by instructors from
our Young Men's Christian Association, inspired by nothing more heady
than lemonade, and chaperoned by the women-officers, who have attained a
mixture of authority and motherly supervision over every individual girl
that reminds me of nothing so much as the care, born of a sort of divine
cunning, of a very dear and clever Mother Superior at a convent I once
stayed at in France. For the interesting point for both the French and
ourselves to note is that in the treatment of our Women's Army in France
we have taken a leaf out of their book. We look after the girls with
something of that love and care which surrounds a girl in France.
For many of the Women's Army are working girls, who have never been
guarded in their lives, whose parents had probably, after the
lower-class English way, very little influence with them, and who,
though good, honest, rough girls, were free to roam the streets of their
native towns with their friends every evening once their work was over.
Now, for what is for many of them the first time in their lives, they
are being watched and guarded in a manner that is more French than
English, and which I find admirable. As for their walks, their
friendships with men, the personal observation of the acute French will
show them that it is merely our Anglo-Saxon way, and the official
statistics will prove to any doubters how well both the girls and the
men can be trusted to behave themselves. We are a cold nation if you
like, but there it is--it has its excellences, if not its charms.
So much for fundamental differences, which, when intelligence and
sympathy go out to meet them, become merely points on which temperaments
agree to differ amicably, each giving its meed of admiration to the
other. And for minor matters, little things of different customs only,
that nevertheless, occasionally, in the strain of this war, ruffle even
friends, I would say something like this, which is in the hearts of us
all....
France--dear lovely France, to so many of us adored for many years, who
has stood to us for the romance of the world, we know that in many
things our ways are not your ways and never will be, nor would we wish
it otherwise. To each nation her distinctiveness, or she loses her
soul. But, when those ways of ours seem to you most alien, say to
yourself: "This is only England's differing way of doing what we are
doing, of fighting for what we are fighting for--the saving of the right
to individualism, the right to be different...." To gain that we are all
having to become alike, just as to win freedom we are having for a time
to give it up, and the great thing to remember is that this terrible
coherent community life is being borne with only that eventually we may
all be free men once more. Let us, for all time, differ in our own ways,
rather than agree in the German! But also let us, while differing,
understand.