To win this war our girls and women must join the world movement.
The outstanding lesson of the first two years of the war for Great
Britain and France is that the beginning of their victories came with
the entrance of women into the war. The steel wedge splits the log,
not alone by the sharp edge, but the thick head that crowds forward
the cutting edge. The American army is the cutting edge, but the one
hundred millions of people behind lend driving power to our regiments.
There are three million women in Great Britain either in the munition
factories or industries allied thereto. Every twenty-four hours they
produce more small cartridges than all England did the first year of
the war. Every two days they turn out more large cartridges than all
England did the first year of this war. Every six days, with the help
of expert men, they produce more heavy ordnance and cannon than all
England did the first year of this war. These English women pour the
molten steel, tool the shells, run the lathes, make the aeroplanes,
mix the explosives, and they literally hand the shells to the British
soldiers to aim the cannon. They are driving the munition trucks upon
the streets of England and the road to France, they are sowing the
fields, reaping the wheat, threshing the grain, and performing ten
thousand tasks once given over to men. The daughters of professional
men, bankers, manufacturers, as well as of the business classes, are
helping to equip the soldiers at the front. If our government should
to-morrow commandeer ten thousand luxury-making plants for munition
factories, throw them open to millions of women, by next autumn we
should be doing our part to help win this war.
To-day the clouds are thick, but better days are coming. For a time
it may be our lot to toil on in the wilderness, but soon or late the
pilgrim host will enter the Promised Land and hang out the signals of
victory. Those who war for justice and humanity find that the stars
in their courses fight with them, and their soldiers shall be fed on
angels' bread. Truth is stronger than error, liberty is stronger than
tyranny, justice is the genius of our universe, God is omnipotent,
and at last, love and sympathy must prevail. In this faith we must
strive on for a peace that shall defend frontier lines, vindicate the
rights of little peoples and destroy militarism and autocracy. During
the January snowstorms, that noble surgeon and poet, at the head of a
hospital at Vimy Ridge,--Dr. now Sir Andrew Macphail--wrote me a letter
which stayed my heart as the anchor holds the ship in time of storm.
The ground was deep with snow. Many wounded men had been brought in
from the trench. But at midnight, while the winter's wind flapped his
tent, the physician wrote me thus:
"This war is of God. To-day it is peace that is hell. The soldier's
life is a life of poverty, obedience, self-sacrifice; we know what
the civilian's life is. But for the chastisement of this war,
Berlin and Vienna, London and Paris would have descended into hell
within three generations. I once spoke in your Plymouth on the
blessings of peace; if ever again I have that privilege, I shall
speak on the blessings of war. I never dreamed that men could be so
noble. For three months I have slept on the stone; for three months
before that in a tent; for six months I have not been in a bed; but
I have never been so happy. I have acquired the fine freedom of
a dog, and like a dog, I wear a metal tag around my neck so that
they may know to whom I belong when it happens that I can no longer
speak. And never was a man engaged in a cause so noble. I have seen
Belgium; I have seen a lamb torn by the wolf; I am on the side of
the lamb. I know the explanations the wolf has to offer--they do
not interest me. I only wish that you were here with me at this
battle for your own good; for right here at this western front this
war will be decided, just where all the great wars of history have
always been decided. It is decided already, but will take the enemy
some time yet to find it out."