To-morrow morning at eight o'clock one million British girls will enter
the munition and related factories. To-morrow afternoon at four o'clock
another million girls will enter the same factories, to be followed at
midnight by the third shift of women.
These factories average forty feet wide, and end to end would be 100
feet in length. The roar of the machinery is never silent by day or
night.
In one factory I saw a young woman who was closely related, through her
grandfather, to a man in the House of Lords. Her arms were black with
machine oil, her hair was under a rubber cover, she wore bloomers. Her
task was pouring two tons of molten steel into the shell moulds. The
great shells passed from the hands of one girl to another until the
fiftieth girl, 1,500 feet away, finished the threads into which the
cap's screw was fastened.
Every twenty-four hours these women turn out more small calibre
cartridges than all England did the first year of this war. Every
forty-eight hours they turn out more large cartridges than all England
did the first year of this war. Every six days, with the help of men not
fit for the battle front, they turn out more heavy cannon than all
England did the first year of this war.
They have sent 17,000,900 tons of ammunition to the front. Their shells
are roaring on five battle fronts in three continents. When the British
boys thrust their huge shells into the cannon these boys literally
receive the shells at the hands of the millions of English girls who are
passing them forward.
Wonderful the heroism of the British soldiers! The reason why the men
fight well at the front is because there are women at home worth
fighting for. In all ages battles have been won, partly by the strong
arm of the soldier, but chiefly by the heart that nerves the arm. That
is why John Ruskin once said that "the woman in the rear generally wins
the victory at the front."
It stirs one's sense of wonder to find that all classes and all social
conditions are represented in these factories. Thousands of young
school-teachers have left the schoolroom behind, closed the book and
desk and gone to the factory. Tens of thousands of young wives and
mothers have left their little children with the grandmother. Many
rectors and clergymen and priests, unfit for service at the front by
reason of age, work all day long in the munition factory. Many a
professional man crowds his work in the office that he may reach the
factory for at least a few hours' work upon shot and shell.
One day in France, as I was entering the factory, I saw perhaps twenty
young women come out, hurry across the street to a building where two
old crippled soldiers were taking care of the little children. These
young mothers nursed their babes, looked after the other children and
then hurried back to the factory. Every minute was precious; every day
was big with destiny. Their young husbands and brothers and lovers, when
the German push came, must have their cartridges and shells ready and in
abundance.
Watching these women with their strained, anxious faces--women who cut
each thread in the shell with the accuracy of the expert--you could see
the lips of the woman murmuring, and needed no confession from her that
she was silently praying for the man who would use this weapon to defend
her beloved France, her aged mother and her little child.
When the beast is slain and the Potsdam gang tried and executed for
their crimes, and the boys come home with trumpets and banners, the
ovations will be for the soldiers; but after the soldiers have had their
parade and their honour and their ovation on the first day of the
triumph, there should be a second great parade, in which, while the
soldiers stand on the streets and observe, and the merchants and working
men and the professional classes stand as spectators, down the street
shall march the munition girls, who fashioned the weapons with which the
soldiers slew the common enemy.
For while the boys at the front have defended liberty the girls at home
have armed the soldiers. Neither one without the other could have made
the world safe for democracy.
Through the imagination these women have a right, while they toil, to
watch the shell complete their work. The smith who forges the chain for
the ship's anchor has a right to exult when he looks out through his
imagination upon the great boat held firm by his chain in the hour when
the storm threatened to hurl the craft upon the rocks. The inventor has
a right to say: "That granary full of wheat is mine; I invented the
reaper." The physician has a right to rejoice over the battle and
victory over the youth whose life was saved by the surgeon's skill. Not
otherwise, the munition girl has a right when the long day of battle is
over to say: "I safeguarded that cottage; I lifted a shield above that
little child; I built a wall against the cathedral and the gallery and
the homes of yonder city."
For American girls of vision there is nothing that they so much desire
as the immediate condemnation by our Government of 10,000
luxury-producing plants in this country, which should immediately be
taken over by our Government for munition purposes, and before the
daybreak of the first morning there would be ten million American girls
standing before the doors, trying to break their way in to obtain a
chance to fashion the shells that would protect American boys in danger
at the front.