home again. Others have returned, broken and sick in body and soul.
Towns of the highest civilization, homes of simple human happiness,
are destroyed. Europe’s soil reeks of human blood. The flesh and blood
of men will fertilize the soil of the corn fields of the future on
German, French, Belgian and Russian ground.
“Millions of women’s hearts blaze up in anguish. No human speech is
rich enough to express such depths of suffering. Shall this war of
extermination go on? Shall we sit and wait dumbly for other wars to
come upon us?
“Women of the world, where is your voice?
“Are you only great in patience and suffering?
“The earth soaked in blood, millions of wrecked bodies of husbands,
sweethearts, sons—outrages inflicted on your sex. Can these things not
rouse you to blazing protest?
“Women of the world, where is your voice, that should be sowing seeds
of peace? Do not let yourselves be deterred by those who accuse you of
weakness because you wish for peace, who say you cannot hold back the
bloody march of history by your protest.
“Protest with all your might ... make preparation for peace ... perform
your duty as wives and mothers, as protectors of true civilization and
humanity!”[3]
Still in that silence, she ceased—but now once more all over the hall,
the women rose, and stood there for a moment, looking into the eyes of
the woman of Germany. There was no handclapping, there was no word,
there was only that single sign—as if in that room there were but one
Person, and that Person answered like this to what she said.
The Inger stared about him. What did this mean? Were these a few
traitors who had come here to teach American women to play traitor too—
The German woman was speaking again.
“A letter,” she said, “a letter from German and Austrian women, ‘to the
women of England—and of the world.’”
She read: “Women, creators and guardians of life, must loathe war,
which destroys life. Through the smoke of battle and thunder of cannon
of hostile peoples, through death, terror, destruction and unending
pain and anxiety, there glows like the dawn of a coming better day the
deep community of feeling of many women of all nations.”[4]
“This is signed,” she said, “by one hundred and fifty German and
Austrian women. Thousands more are with us in name and spirit. Do not
doubt—doubt!”
Another woman rose, and then another:
A letter from the women of England—
“... Is it not our mission to preserve life? Do not humanity and
common sense alike prompt us to join hands with the women of neutral
countries, and urge the stay of further bloodshed—forever?... There
is but one way to do this ... by Wisdom and Reason. Can they begin too
soon?... Already we seem to hear
‘A hundred nations swear that there shall be
Pity and Peace and Love among the good and free.’”[5]
Then a letter from the women of Belgium, from the women of Switzerland,
from the women of Italy—five hundred, two thousand names to each.
At length the Inger understood. These women who were here to protest
against war were speaking for thousands upon thousands of women all
over the world. And here were thousands listening, in the nation’s
capitol.
A little French woman spoke, each sentence translated by another woman.
“The humblest cry can sometimes be heard joined to many others.... It
is very well for gentlemen banqueting at Guildhall to rejoice at being
able to assemble so comfortably during the greatest war in history,
thanks to the valor of the British army which defends the coast; but
they should think of those who are exposing their lives....
“My two sons are in the trenches since the end of September, and have
never slept in a bed since. It would be nothing if the cold had not set
in so dreadfully....”[6]
Something—no one could have told whether it was a breath, or a look
from one to one, went over the hall. More than in a long account of
horror, this French mother, who spoke no other tongue, had made them
feel what she was feeling.
There was a Polish woman of the country about Cracow who told the story
of what had happened to her village. She spoke slowly, through an
interpreter, and almost without emotion.
“We had just three little streets,” she said, “so it was not much to
take. But they took them....” And she told how, and how a hundred
children in the village had died. “I should be less than a woman in
courage if I did not say that I, for one, shall not be silent even one
day until my death. Every day I shall be crying, ‘Women of the World.
This can not happen again, if we are women of flesh and not of stone.’”
There was a woman of Servia, and she was a peasant woman. Her clothes
were those which her neighbors had found for her. Even then, so great
was the haste at the last, she had crossed the ocean in a skirt and a
shawl, but with no waist beneath the shawl.
“I had to come,” she said, through her interpreter. “There is only one
hell worse than the hell that we have been through: and that is not to
cry to the last breath that it shall be stopped. That it shall not come
again to other women like us....”
There was a woman of Belgium, who belonged to a family high in position
in Louvain. She wore garments which had been given to her from the
American boxes. It was strange to hear that soft voice, in its broken
English, speak of a thousand horrors with no passion. But when she
spoke of To-morrow, and of what it must bring, her voice throbbed and
strove with the spirit which poured through her.
“Do not think of Louvain,” she said. “Do not think of Belgium. Say,
if you like, that this was only a part of what happens in war. Think,
then, only of war. Think that war must not be ever again in this our
world. While women have voices to raise to other women, we must make
them understand that peace is our contribution to the earth. Women of
the world, what are we waiting for?”
Then there came a woman, young, erect, burning—a woman of Hungary.
“Listen,” she said. “A Hungarian girl who went to care for the
Galician refugees tells me in a recent letter the story of a poor
woman who said: ‘I wanted to protect my children. I ran with the other
inhabitants of the village. I took my baby in a shawl on my back. The
two others hung on to my skirts. I ran fast, as fast as I could. When
I got to the station, I had the two children hanging on my skirts, I
had the shawl on my back, but I had no baby and I don’t know where I
dropped him.’”
The Hungarian woman went on:
“They don’t want us to find out that there is no glory, no big
patriotism, no love for anything noble, nothing but butchery and
slaughter and rape. War means that. You know the story of the
War-brides. You know how agents of the different churches compete with
military rulers in glorifying this kind of prostitution. But do you
know of the concentration camps with the compulsory service of women?
You may have seen the full reports of the atrocities committed on
Belgian women—but you didn’t get the other reports about the same kind
of atrocities committed by _all_ armies on female human beings between
the ages of five and eighty-nine in all the countries where the game of
war is being played. _Women of the world, what are we waiting for?_”[7]
And beside her, as she finished, stood an Irish woman, taking up the
thread of the Hungarian’s woman’s cry:
“If we women, to whom even a partial knowledge of these happenings has
come, remain silent now, then we are blood guilty. We are more than
blood guilty, for we must be numbered with those who will even dare the
murder of a soul.
“Let us not blind ourselves with talk of the glories and heroisms of
war. We dare not ignore the moral and spiritual wreckage that remains
unchronicled. We have to think of men brutalized and driven to hideous
deeds by their experiences; of men with reason destroyed; of men
disgraced for lack of the cold courage that can face such horrors;
of men with a slain faith in good, their outlook on life eternally
embittered. What of the women for whom the French government has had to
devise legislation to deter them from infanticide? What of the children
begotten under such conditions? Women of the world, where is your
voice, that should be sowing the seeds of peace?”[8]
Almost as her own voice, went on the voice of another woman, the brief
poignant entreaty of an English woman:
“_We ask nothing strange!_ Only that which Christianity, civilization
and motherhood dictate.
“The well-being of children touches all. On that common ground the
opposing nations could meet and crown their courage by laying aside
their arms at the call of a higher humanity.
“Can mother hearts turn from this cry? Will not womanhood join in
resolve, though in divers tongues, yet with but one Voice—the Voice of
pure human love and pity....”[9]
The Inger stood against the wall, and listened. A place had opened
into which he had never looked, whose existence he had never guessed.
He stood frowning, staring—at first trying to understand, then
understanding and passionately doubting. The appeals of the first
speakers did not touch him. What did women know of these things?
Then the Polish woman had spoken. Then the Servian woman. Then the
Belgium woman. These undeniably knew what they were talking about! But
not until that woman of Hungary had stood there, did the thought come
which had pierced him: What if all that she said was true—and was true
of Lory? What if it had been her child whom Lory had lost from her
shawl as she ran....
He breathed hard, and looked about him. They were all, men and women
alike, sitting as tense as he. And he saw that all these believed. No
one, no one could doubt these women.
“This is what we have to do—” it was another German woman who was
speaking and the interpreter was giving her words. “This is what we
have to do: our cry must ring forth irresistibly from millions of
voices: ‘Enough of slaughter, enough of devastation. Peace, lasting
peace! Make room for peaceful work. Leave the way free for the
fraternity of the peoples and for their coöperation in bringing to
flower the culture of international civilization!’
“If men kill, it is for women to fight for the preservation of life.
If men are silent, it is our duty to raise our voices on behalf of our
ideals.”[10]
The Inger stood where the wall curved, so he was looking at the rows of
faces from near the front of the room. And he was looking on a sign, a
hint no greater in emphasis than a shadow, of what war is to women. He
understood it, momentarily he even felt it. And for a flash he saw them
all as he had seen the women in the Chicago employment agency—as if he
were those women and could suffer what they suffered.
He remembered Lory, and her face lifted to his in the Chicago meeting.
“They’re voting to kill folks,” she had said. “Oh, my God.”
This was what she had meant. She had understood, and he had not
understood. How had she understood? He thought about her. Out of Inch,
out of scenes of killing, and of misery put upon life, Jem Moor’s girl
had come, and she knew how to feel the way these women felt. All that
he had been feeling for her became something which beat upon his heart
like light.
A note had been sent to the chairman, and with her announcement, a
movement of wonder went over the audience, and this wonder was touched
with dread. A famous army man was present, and he would speak.
He came forward firmly, and it was by the merest chance that he stood
there before them erect, strong, compact, alive, for he had seen
service. The Inger looked at him, quickening. Immediately, at the sight
of his uniform, the Inger had felt a restoration of confidence in what
had always been. Then the man faced them, and he spoke as quietly as
the women themselves:
“I ask only to tell you,” he said, “that I have been for twenty-five
years in the service—a part of the time in active service. I have
believed in armies and in armament. I still believe them to have been
an obvious necessity—while our world was being whipped into shape. Now
I am in the last years of my service—I do not take very readily to new
ideas—even when I know that these point to the next step on the way. I
tell you frankly, that if there were a call to arms, I should be there
in my old place—I should serve as I have always served, I should kill
whom they told me to kill, as long as they would have me there. But—”
he hesitated, and lifted his face, and in it was a light that has shone
on a face in no battlefield, “if that time comes, I shall thank God for
every woman who protests against it, as you here are protesting. And,
if that time comes, from my soul I shall honor the men who will have
the courage to be shot, rather than to go out to shoot their fellows.
These men will not be lacking: I have read the signs and I have heard
men talk. Your new way of warfare is not in vain. You will win. You are
the voice of To-morrow. I have wanted you to know that I feel this—and
that to you and to your effort I say God bless you, and prosper what
you do.”
For the first time that night the silence of the audience was broken.
A thunder of hands and voices spoke to him. And, as he turned to leave
the platform, they did that by which they paid the highest honor that
they knew—and rose and remained standing until he had reached his seat.
“Jove,” said the man near the Inger. “Old Battle-axe! Now watch the men
catch up. It only needed one full-blooded man to say it....”
“Rot,” said the man beyond him. “No matter what they say, you know and
I know that trade will never get out of the way of peace. There’ll be
no peace while we have trade—and that’ll be for some time to come!”
At this the first man laughed.
“Trade,” he said, “was a thought before it was trade. Peace is a
thought—yet.”
On the stage some one was quoting Washington: “My first wish is—to
see the whole world in peace and the inhabitants of it as one band
of brothers, striving who should contribute most to the happiness of
mankind.”
And Victor Hugo: “A day will come when a cannon ball will be exhibited
in public museums, just as an instrument of torture is now; and people
will be amazed that such a thing could ever have been.”
Methodically, and as if it had become their business, the women fell
to discussing what they must do. In each country more groups must be
organized—for School, Home, States, Municipalities—“for the lifting
of the programme of pacifism into the realm of serious commercial and
educational and home and political consideration.” The psychology of
war must give place to the psychology of peace.
From unfair trade legislation by one country against another, down to
the sale of toy weapons and soldiers; and from competing expenditures
for national defence down to military drill in schools and colleges,
the temptations to militarism must pass from the earth.
“We know,” an American woman said, “that war depends on economic
conditions beyond our control. But we know, too, that there is
something potent to change even these, and it is this potency which we
dream to liberate.”
And, beside the Inger, the man said again:
“Peace is only a thought,—yet. But even economic conditions were only
thought, once!”
Gradually in the voice of one and another, the word took shape—so
simply that the enormity of the import was pathetically lacking: That
representatives of the women of the world, united in a demand for
international righteousness, shall petition the men and women of the
world to turn to the new knowledge that war is an outworn way to settle
difficulties; that with one voice we shall all refuse any longer to let
the traditions of a past age be put upon us; that the old phrases and
catch-words shall not stand for one moment before the naked question
of the race: “Is this the best that life can do with life?” That we
shall learn from one another that there is no such thing as preparing
against war, but that to prepare for war breeds war—twin-born are the
slayer and the slain; that we shall teach one another that “Thou shalt
not kill” is not only moral law, but sound economic policy, for always
these two are one. And that from the constructive plans devised in
anguish and in hope by men and women of to-day, there be selected and
inaugurated a world programme for permanent peace without armistice
and a council of the nations looking toward the federation of the world.
“We have talked long enough of treaties and of arbitration,” they said.
“Let us have done with such play. Let us speak the phrase quite simply:
The federation of the world.”
And the message concluded:
“For we, the women of the world, have banded ourselves together to
demand that war be abolished.”
Last, he remembered a Voice. Afterward, he could not have told what
woman spoke, or of what nation they said that she had come. But what
she said was like the weaving of what the others had spun.
“_Remember,_” said her Voice, “_that all this is nothing. It is only
the body, made for the spirit. And the spirit is that new dominant mind
which shall be born in the world—the mind of love._
“_You’ll not get this by going to governments. You’ll not get this by
the meeting of groups of representative people. You’ll not get this
by International Police. These things must be—will be, as a matter of
course. But they will not be the mind of love._
“_Something will come into the world—and it will know nothing of
arbitration, it will know nothing of armistice, it will know nothing
of treaties; nor will it know anything of those other ways of secret
warfare by which great nations seem to keep clean hands: the ways of
‘high’ finance through ‘peaceful penetration.’_
“_Something will come into the world, and it will know nothing of
nations._
“_The little loyalties will go. National pride, national ‘honor,’
patriotism—all the little scaffolds will fall away. And within will be
the light that we lack._
“_It is the mind of love. I am not afraid to say that beside it,
governments are nothing. It is the mind of love. It may be in the
simplest cottage of a peasant who goes to the war for a false ideal.
But of this as yet the nations do not know._
“_What is it that we must know?_
“_That the nations are nothing—the people are everything. That the
people are bound together by ties which the nations must cease to
break. That the people are heart’s kindred, met here together for their
world-work, and that the nations must cease to interrupt._”
* * * * *
Even then the Cabinet meeting was already concluded, and the newsboys
were on the streets with the Extras; and on the bulletin boards of the
world the word was being flashed:
“NO ACTION TO BE TAKEN
BY U. S.”
And in the newspapers was the text of that letter, simple, human, of
almost religious import, which was to make the United States, years
hence, stand out as the first great headland upon new shores.
* * * * *
The people were coming out at the doors of the Capitol. Among them
were the women who had spoken—the Polish woman, the Servian peasant,
the lady of Louvain. The other women in the crowd put out their hands
and took the hands of these women. Those stretching, pressing hands
of silent women marked a giant fellowship which disregarded oceans,
strange tongues, countless varying experiences, and took account of
only one thing.
The Inger was looking up at the white dome against the black sky, and
about him at the march of the people. Through his thought ran the flood
of this that he had heard. In his absorption he lurched heavily against
a man who was trying to pass him and who jostled him. For the first
time in his life, the Inger felt no surge of anger at such a happening.
He looked in the man’s face.
“Gosh,” the Inger said. “That was too alfired bad!”
The man smiled and nodded. Momentarily, the Inger felt on his arm the
touch of the man’s hand.
“All right, brother,” the man said, and was gone.
The Inger felt a sudden lightness of heart. And about him the people
went along so quietly. Abruptly the tumult of his thinking gave way to
something nearer than these things. He looked in their faces. None of
them knew that his father had died! It occurred to him now that there
was hardly one of them who, on being told, would not say something to
him—perhaps even shake his hand. He thought that many of these people
must have seen their fathers die. He wondered which ones these would
be, and he wished that he knew which ones they were. Something in him
went along with the people, because they must have had fathers who had
died. He looked at them in a new way. Their fathers must have died....
Oh, if only, he thought, Lory might have been there to-night with those
women who felt as she felt....
He was aware of a hand on his arm. He turned, feeling an obscure
pleasure that perhaps some one had something to say to him. It was
Lory, alone.
X
HER face in the darkness, and about them the green gloom of the Square,
were all that he knew of the time. Not far from them, like murals on
the night, went the people, that little lighted stream of people, down
the white steps and along the gray drives.
At first he could say nothing to her. He seized at her hand as he had
seized upon it that night in Chicago, but then he remembered and let
her hand fall; and at last he blurted out a consuming question:
“Where is he?”
“Who?” Lory asked surprisingly, and understood, and still more
surprisingly replied:
“Bunchy! He’s gone to New York.”
This city’s name the Inger repeated stupidly, and as if it made no
answer to anything.
“Just for a few days,” she explained, “before he goes home.”
“Home!”
To tell the truth she seemed not to be thinking very much about Bunchy.
“I told him I’d never marry him—not in fifty hundred years. And he
went home.”
He considered this incredulously.
“Couldn’t you tell him that without comin’ clear to Washington to do
it?” he demanded.
“No,” she said. “There was the money. Why didn’t you tell me you’d give
Dad that money?”
He tried to answer her, but all the while this miracle was taking him
to itself: Bunchy had gone.
“I guess because it sounded like a square deal, when I only done it to
devil Bunchy some,” he told her.
“Is that all you done it for?”
He looked at her swiftly. Was that all that he had done it for?
“Is it?” she said.
“I donno,” he answered truthfully. “It was some of it.”
“I wish,” she said, “I wish’t I knew.”
With that he moved a little toward her, and tried to see her face.
“Why?” he asked.
She turned away and said nothing. And when she did that, he caught his
breath and stooped to her.
“You tell me why you wish’t you knew,” he bade her.
“Oh well,” she said—and she was breathless too—“if you done it to
help me—get away—then I shouldn’t feel so bad about goin’ to the hut.”
“About comin’ to me?”
“About makin’ you do all this for me!” she cried. “I’m sick over it. I
don’t know how to tell you....”
He wondered if it was possible that she did not understand.
“I done the only thing I could think to do,” she said. “There wasn’t
anybody else....”
“Do you get the idea,” he demanded, “that I’m ever going to forget how
you said that to me that first night? I was drunk—but I knew when you
said that. And then—”
“Don’t,” she said.
“How can I help it?” he asked bitterly. “I made fool enough of myself
that night—”
“_Don’t_,” she begged.
“—so’s you never can forget it,” he finished. “And so’s I never can.
If it hadn’t been for that—”
“What then?” she asked.
And now he did not answer, but looked away from her, and so it was she
who made him tell.
“What then?” she said again.
“_Would_ you have liked me then,” he burst out, “before that night?”
She said—and nothing could have swept him like the simplicity and
honesty of this:
“But you never come down to town once after that morning on the horse.”
“How did you know that?” he cried.
“I watched,” she answered, quietly.
And yet this, he knew, was before that night on the trail. This was
still in the confidence of her supreme confession: “I didn’t know no
woman I could tell—nor no other decent man.” And she had watched for
him....
But, after all, she was telling him so _now_! And here, to-night, when
she no longer had need of him, her comradeship was unchanged. And there
had been those hours on the train from Chicago....
“You watched!” he repeated. “Oh look here! Would you watch—now?”
To her voice came that tremor that he remembered, which seemed to be in
the very words themselves.
“I watched all day to-day,” she said.
Even then he did not touch her. It was as if there were some gulf which
she must be the one to cross.
“Oh Lory, Lory!” he cried.
And she understood, and it was she who stretched out her hands to him.