WORKING IN!
The day after we went to the city I got my first real glimpse of war!
It was the white face of our French neighbor. His wife and two little
girls had gone to France a month before the war broke out, and were
visiting his family in a village on the Marne. Since the outbreak of
war he had had no word from them, and his face worked pitifully when
he told me this. "Not one word, though I cabled and got friends in
London to wire _aussi_," he said. "But I will go myself and see."
"What about your house and motor?" he was asked.
He raised his shoulders and flung out his hands. "What difference?" he
said; "I will not need them."
I saw him again the day he left. He came out of his house with a small
Airedale pup which had been the merry playmate of Alette and Yvonne.
He stood on the veranda holding the dog in his arms. Strangers were
moving into the house and their boxes stood on the floor. I went over
to say good-bye.
"I will not come back," he said simply; "it will be a long fight; we
knew it would come, but we did not know when. If I can but find wife
and children--but the Germans--they are devils--Boches--no one knows
them as we do!"
He stood irresolute a moment, then handed me the dog and went quickly
down the steps.
"It is for France!" he said.
I sat on the veranda railing and watched him go. The Airedale blinded
his eyes looking after him, then looked at me, plainly asking for an
explanation. But I had to tell him that I knew no more about it than
he did. Then I tried to comfort him by telling him that many little
dogs were much worse off than he, for they had lost their people and
their good homes as well, and he still had his comfortable home and
his good meals. But it was neither meals nor bed that his faithful
little heart craved, and for many weeks a lonely little Airedale on
Chestnut Street searched diligently for his merry little playmates and
his kind master, but he found them not.
There was still a certain unreality about it all. Sometimes it has
been said that the men who went first went for adventure. Perhaps they
did, but it does not matter--they have since proved of what sort of
stuff they were made.
When one of the first troop trains left Winnipeg, a handsome young
giant belonging to the Seventy-ninth Highlanders said, as he swung
himself up on the rear coach, "The only thing I am afraid of is that
it will all be over before we get there." He was needlessly alarmed,
poor lad! He was in time for everything; Festubert, Saint-Éloi, Ypres;
for the gas attacks before the days of gas-masks, for trench-fever,
for the D.C.M.; and now, with but one leg, and blind, he is one of the
happy warriors at St. Dunstan's whose cheerfulness puts to shame those
of us who are whole!
There were strange scenes at the station when those first trains went
out. The Canadians went out with a flourish, with cheers, with songs,
with rousing music from the bands. The serious men were the French and
Belgian reservists, who, silently, carrying their bundles, passed
through our city, with grim, determined faces. They knew, and our boys
did not know, to what they were going. That is what made the
difference in their manner.
The government of one of the provinces, in the early days of the war,
shut down the public works, and, strange to say, left the bars open.
Their impulse was right--but they shut down the wrong thing; it should
have been the bars, of course. They knew something should be shut
down. We are not blaming them; it was a panicky time. People often,
when they hear the honk of an automobile horn, jump back instead of
forward. And it all came right in time.
A moratorium was declared at once, which for the time being relieved
people of their debts, for there was a strong feeling that the cup of
sorrow was so full now that all movable trouble should be set off for
another day!
The temperance people then asked, as a corresponding war measure,
that the bars be closed. They urged that the hearts of our people were
already so burdened that they should be relieved of the trouble and
sorrow which the liquor traffic inevitably brings. "Perhaps," they
said to the government, "when a happier season comes, we may be able
to bear it better; but we have so many worries now, relieve us of this
one, over which you have control."
Then the financial side of the liquor traffic began to pinch. Manitoba
was spending thirteen million dollars over the bars every year. The
whole Dominion's drink bill was one hundred millions. When the people
began to rake and save to meet the patriotic needs, and to relieve the
stress of unemployment, these great sums of money were thought of
longingly--and with the longing which is akin to pain! The problem of
unemployment was aggravated by the liquor evil and gave another
argument for prohibition.
I heard a woman telling her troubles to a sympathetic friend one day,
as we rode in an elevator.
"'E's all right when 'e's in work," she said; "but when 'e's hidle
'e's something fierce: 'e knocks me about crool. 'E guzzles all the
time 'e's out of work."
It was easy to believe. Her face matched her story; she was a poor,
miserable, bedraggled creature, with teeth out in front. She wore
black cotton gloves such as undertakers supply for the pallbearers,
and every finger was out. The liquor traffic would have a better
chance if there were not so many arguments against it walking round.
About this time, too, the traffic suffered a great bereavement, for
the personal liberty argument fell, mortally wounded. The war did
that, too.
All down the ages there have been men who believed that personal
liberty included the right to do what one wished to do, no matter who
was hurt. So, if a man wished to drink, by the sacred rights for which
his forefathers had bled and died he was at liberty to do so, and then
go home and beat up his own wife and family if he wanted to; for if
you can't beat your own wife, whom can you beat, I'd like to know?
Any one who disputed this sacred right was counted a spoil-fun and a
joy-killer!
But a change came over the world's thought in the early days of the
war. Liberty grew to be a holy word, a sacred thing, when the blood of
our brightest and best was being poured out in its defense, and never
again will the old, selfish, miserable conception of liberty obtain
favor. The Kaiser helped here, too, for he is such a striking example
of the one who claims absolute liberty for himself, no matter who is
hurt, that somehow we never hear it mentioned now. I believe it is
gone, forever!
The first step in the curtailment of the liquor traffic was the
closing of the bars at seven o'clock, and the beneficial effect was
felt at once. Many a man got home early for the first time in his
life, and took his whole family to the "movies."
The economy meetings brought out some quaint speeches. No wonder!
People were taken unawares. We were unprepared for war, and the
changes it had brought;--we were as unprepared as the woman who said,
in speaking of unexpected callers, "I had not even time to turn my
plants." There was much unintentional humor. One lady, whose home was
one of the most beautiful in the city, and who entertained lavishly,
told us, in her address on "Economy," that at the very outbreak of the
war she reduced her cook's wages from thirty to twenty dollars, and
gave the difference to the Patriotic Fund; that she had found a
cheaper dressmaker who made her dresses now for fifteen dollars, where
formerly she had paid twenty-five; and she added artlessly, "They are
really nicer, and I do think we should all give in these practical
ways; that's the sort of giving that I really enjoy!"
Another woman told of how much she had given up for the Patriotic
Fund; that she had determined not to give one Christmas present, and
had given up all the societies to which she had belonged, even the
Missionary Society, and was giving it all to the Red Cross. "I will
not even give a present to the boy who brings the paper," she declared
with conviction. Whether or not the boy's present ever reached the
Red Cross, I do not know. But ninety-five per cent of the giving was
real, honest, hard, sacrificing giving. Elevator-boys, maids,
stenographers gave a percentage of their earnings, and gave it
joyously. They like to give, but they do not like to have it taken
away from them by an employer, who thereby gets the credit of the
gift. The Red Cross mite-boxes into which children put their candy
money, while not enriching the Red Cross to any large extent, trained
the children to take some share in the responsibility; and one
enthusiastic young citizen, who had been operated on for appendicitis,
proudly exhibited his separated appendix, preserved in alcohol, at so
much per look, and presented the proceeds to the Red Cross.
The war came home to the finest of our people first. It has not
reached them all yet, but it is working in, like the frost into the
cellars when the thermometer shows forty degrees below zero. Many a
cellar can stand a week of this--but look out for the second! Every
day it comes to some one.
"I don't see why we are always asked to give," one woman said
gloomily, when the collector asked her for a monthly subscription to
the Red Cross. "Every letter that goes out of the house has a stamp on
it--and we write a queer old lot of letters, and I guess we've done
our share."
She is not a dull woman either or hard of heart. It has not got to her
yet--that's all! I cannot be hard on her in my judgment, for it did
not come to me all at once, either.
When I saw the first troops going away, I wondered how their mothers
let them go, and I made up my mind that I would not let my boy go,--I
was so glad he was only seventeen,--for hope was strong in our hearts
that it might be over before he was of military age. It was the
Lusitania that brought me to see the whole truth. Then I saw that we
were waging war on the very Princes of Darkness, and I knew that
morning when I read the papers, I knew that it would be better--a
thousand times better--to be dead than to live under the rule of
people whose hearts are so utterly black and whose process of
reasoning is so oxlike--they are so stupidly brutal. I knew then that
no man could die better than in defending civilization from this
ghastly thing which threatened her!
Soon after that I knew, without a word being said, that my boy wanted
to go--I saw the seriousness come into his face, and knew what it
meant. It was when the news from the Dardanelles was heavy on our
hearts, and the newspapers spoke gravely of the outlook.
One day he looked up quickly and said, "I want to go--I want to help
the British Empire--while there is a British Empire!"
And then I realized that my boy, my boy, had suddenly become a man and
had put away childish things forever.
I shall always be glad that the call came to him, not in the
intoxication of victory, but in the dark hour of apparent defeat.