WHAT DO WOMEN THINK OF WAR? (NOT THAT IT MATTERS)
Bands in the street, and resounding cheers,
And honor to him whom the army led!
But his mother moans thro' her blinding tears--
"My boy is dead--is dead!"
"Madam," said Charles XI of Sweden to his wife when she appealed to him
for mercy to some prisoner, "I married you to give me children, not to
give me advice." That was said a long time ago, and the haughty old
Emperor put it rather crudely, but he put it straight. This is still
the attitude of the world towards women. That men are human beings,
but women are women, with one reason for their existence, has long been
the dictum of the world.
More recent philosophers have been more adroit--they have sought to
soften the blow, and so they palaver the women by telling them what a
tremendous power they are for good. They quote the men who have said:
"All that I am my mother made me." They also quote that old iniquitous
lie, about the hand that rocks the cradle ruling the world.
For a long time men have been able to hush women up by these means; and
many women have gladly allowed themselves to be deceived. Sometimes
when a little child goes driving with his father he is allowed to hold
the ends of the reins, and encouraged to believe that he is driving,
and it works quite well with a very small child. Women have been
deceived in the same way into believing that they are the controlling
factor in the world. Here and there, there have been doubters among
women who have said: "If it be true that the hand that rocks the cradle
rules the world, how comes the liquor traffic and the white slave
traffic to prevail among us unchecked? Do women wish for these things?
Do the gentle mothers whose hands rule the world declare in favor of
these things?" Every day the number of doubters has increased, and now
women everywhere realize that a bad old lie has been put over on them
for years. The hand that rocks the cradle does not rule the world. If
it did, human life would be held dearer and the world would be a
sweeter, cleaner, safer place than it is now!
Women are naturally the guardians of the race, and every normal woman
desires children. Children are not a handicap in the race of life
either, they are an inspiration. We hear too much about the burden of
motherhood and too little of its benefits. The average child does well
for his parents, and teaches them many things. Bless his little soft
hands--he broadens our outlook, quickens our sympathies, and leads us,
if we will but let him, into all truth. A child pays well for his
board and keep.
Deeply rooted in every woman's heart is the love and care of children.
A little girl's first toy is a doll, and so, too, her first great
sorrow is when her doll has its eyes poked out by her little brother.
Dolls have suffered many things at the hands of their maternal uncles.
There, little girl, don't cry,
They have broken your doll, I know,
contains in it the universal note of woman's woe!
But just as the woman's greatest sorrow has come through her children,
so has her greatest development. Women learned to cook, so that their
children might be fed; they learned to sew that their children might be
clothed, and women are learning to think so that their children may be
guided.
Since the war broke out women have done a great deal of knitting.
Looking at this great army of women struggling with rib and back seam,
some have seen nothing in it but a "fad" which has supplanted for the
time tatting and bridge. But it is more than that. It is the desire
to help, to care for, to minister; it is the same spirit which inspires
our nurses to go out and bind up the wounded and care for the dying.
The woman's outlook on life is to save, to care for, to help. Men make
wounds and women bind them up, and so the women, with their hearts
filled with love and sorrow, sit in their quiet homes and knit.
Comforter--they call it--yes--
So it is for my distress,
For it gives my restless hands
Blessed work. God understands
How we women yearn to be
Doing something ceaselessly.
Women have not only been knitting--they have been thinking. Among
other things they have thought about the German women, those faithful,
patient, home-loving, obedient women, who never interfere in public
affairs, nor question man's ruling. The Kaiser says women have only
two concerns in life, cooking and children, and the German women have
accepted his dictum. They are good cooks and faithful nurses to their
children.
According to the theories of the world, the sons of such women should
be the gentlest men on earth. Their home has been so sacred, and
well-kept; their mother has been so gentle, patient and unworldly--she
has never lowered the standard of her womanhood by asking to vote, or
to mingle in the "hurly burly" of politics. She has been humble, and
loving, and always hoped for the best.
According to the theories of the world, the gentle sons of gentle
mothers will respect and reverence all womankind everywhere. Yet, we
know that in the invasion of Belgium, the German soldiers made a shield
of Belgian women and children in front of their army; no child was too
young, no woman too old, to escape their cruelty; no mother's prayers,
no child's appeal could stay their fury! These chivalrous sons of
gentle, loving mothers marched through the land of Belgium, their
nearest neighbor, leaving behind them smoking trails of ruin, black as
their own hard hearts!
What, then, is the matter with the theory? Nothing, except that there
is nothing in it--it will not work. Women who set a low value on
themselves make life hard for all women. The German woman's ways have
been ways of pleasantness, but her paths have not been paths of peace;
and now, women everywhere are thinking of her, rather bitterly. Her
peaceful, humble, patient ways have suddenly ceased to appear virtuous
in our eyes and we see now, it is not so much a woman's duty to bring
children into the world, as to see what sort of a world she is bringing
them into, and what their contribution will be to it. Bertha Krupp has
made good guns and the German women have raised good soldiers--if guns
and soldiers can be called "good"--and between them they have manned
the most terrible and destructive war machine that the world has ever
known. We are not grateful to either of them.
The nimble fingers of the knitting women are transforming balls of wool
into socks and comforters, but even a greater change is being wrought
in their own hearts. Into their gentle souls have come bitter thoughts
of rebellion. They realize now how little human life is valued, as
opposed to the greed and ambition of nations. They think bitterly of
Napoleon's utterance on the subject of women--that the greatest woman
in the world is the one who brings into the world the greatest number
of sons; they also remember that he said that a boy could stop a bullet
as well as a man, and that God is on the side of the heaviest
artillery. From these three statements they get the military idea of
women, children, and God, and the heart of the knitting woman recoils
in horror from the cold brutality of it all. They realize now
something of what is back of all the opposition to the woman's
advancement into all lines of activity and a share in government.
Women are intended for two things, to bring children into the world and
to make men comfortable, and then they must keep quiet and if their
hearts break with grief, let them break quietly--that's all. No woman
is so unpopular as the noisy woman who protests against these things.
The knitting women know now why the militant suffragettes broke windows
and destroyed property, and went to jail for it joyously, and without a
murmur--it was the protest of brave women against the world's estimate
of woman's position. It was the world-old struggle for liberty. The
knitting women remember now with shame and sorrow that they have said
hard things about the suffragettes, and thought they were unwomanly and
hysterical. Now they know that womanliness, and peaceful gentle ways,
prayers, petitions and tears have long been tried but are found
wanting; and now they know that these brave women in England, maligned,
ridiculed, persecuted, as they were, have been fighting every woman's
battle, fighting for the recognition of human life, and the mother's
point of view. Many of the knitting women have seen a light shine
around their pathway, as they have passed down the road from the heel
to the toe, and they know now that the explanation cannot be accepted
any longer that the English women are "crazy." That has been offered
so often and been accepted.
Crazy! That's such an easy way to explain actions which we do not
understand. Crazy! and it gives such a delightful thrill of sanity to
the one who says it--such a pleasurable flash of superiority!
Oh, no, they have not been crazy, unless acts of heroism and suffering
for the sake of others can be described as crazy! The knitting women
wish now that there had been "crazy" women in Germany to direct the
thought of the nation to the brutality of the military system, to have
aroused the women to struggle for a human civilization, instead of a
masculine civilization such as they have now. They would have fared
badly of course, even worse than the women in England, but they are
faring badly now, and to what purpose? The women of Belgium have fared
badly. After all, the greatest thing in life is not to live
comfortably--it is to live honorably, and when that becomes impossible,
to die honorably!
The woman who knits is thinking sadly of the glad days of peace, now
unhappily gone by, when she was so sure it was her duty to bring
children into the world. She thinks of the glad rapture with which she
looked into the sweet face of her first-born twenty years ago--the
brave lad who went with the first contingent, and is now at the front.
She was so sure then that she had done a noble thing in giving this
young life to the world. He was to have been a great doctor, a great
healer, one who bound up wounds, and make weak men strong--and now--in
the trenches, he stands, this lad of hers, with the weapons of death in
his hands, with bitter hatred in his heart, not binding wounds, but
making them, sending poor human beings out in the dark to meet their
Maker, unprepared, surrounded by sights and sounds that must harden his
heart or break it. Oh! her sunny-hearted lad! So full of love and
tenderness and pity, so full of ambition and high resolves and noble
impulses, he is dead--dead already--and in his place there stands
"private 355" a man of hate, a man of blood! Many a time the knitting
has to be laid aside, for the bitter tears blur the stitches.
The woman who knits thinks of all this and now she feels that she who
brought this boy into the world, who is responsible for his existence,
has some way been to blame. Is life really such a boon that any should
crave it? Do we really confer a favor on the innocent little souls we
bring into the world, or do we owe them an apology?
She thinks now of Abraham's sacrifice, when he was willing at God's
command to offer his dearly beloved son on the altar; and now she knows
it was not so hard for Abraham, for he knew it was God who asked it,
and he had God's voice to guide him! Abraham was sure, but about
this--who knows?
Then she thinks of the little one who dropped out of the race before it
was well begun, and of the inexplicable smile of peace which lay on his
small white face, that day, so many years ago now, when they laid him
away with such sorrow, and such agony of loss. She understands now why
the little one smiled, while all around him wept.
And she thinks enviously of her neighbor across the way, who had no son
to give, the childless woman for whom in the old days she felt so
sorry, but whom now she envies. She is the happiest woman of all--so
thinks the knitting woman, as she sits alone in her quiet house; for
thoughts can grow very bitter when the house is still and the boyish
voice is heard no more shouting, "Mother" in the hall.
There, little girl, don't cry!
They have broken your heart, I know.