But long before July 17, 1915, woman’s part in this war began. It began
on August 5, 1914, when the first hundred thousand of our voluntary army
sprang into being as by a miracle. The miracle (if I am asked to account
for it) had its origin in the word of woman. Without that word we should
have had no Kitchener’s Army, for “on the decision of the women, above
everything else, lay the issues of the men’s choice.” {*}
* The Times.
It needs little imagination to lift, as it were, the roofs off a hundred
homes, and see and hear what was going on there in those early days
of the war, after the clear call went out over England, “Your King and
Country need you.”
In the little house of a City clerk, married only a year before, the
young wife is saying, “Yes, I think you ought to go, dear. It’s rather
a pity, so soon after the boy was born... just as you were expecting
a rise, too, and we were going to move into that nice cottage in the
garden suburb. But, then, it will be all for the best, and you mustn’t
think of me.”
Or perhaps it is early morning in the flat of a young lawyer on the day
he has to leave for the front. He is dressed in his khaki, and his
wife, who is busying about his breakfast, is rising to a sublime but
heartbreaking cheerfulness for the last farewell. “Nearly time for you
to go, Robert, if you are to get to the barracks by six.... Betty? Oh,
no, pity to waken her. I’ll kiss her for you when she awakes and say
daddy promised to bring her a dolly from France.... Crying? Of course
not I Why should I be crying?... Good-bye then I Good-bye!...”
Or perhaps it is evening in a great house in Belgravia, and Lady
Somebody is saying adieu to her son. How well she remembers the day
he was born! It was in May. The blossom was out on the lilacs in the
square, and all the windows were open. How happy she had been! He had
a long fever, too, when he was a child, and for three days Death had
hovered over their house. How she had prayed that the dread shadow would
pass away! It did, and now that her boy has grown to be a man he comes
to her in his officer’s uniform to say,... Ah, these partings! They
are really the death-hours of their dear ones, and the women know it,
although, like Andromache, they go on “smiling through their tears.”
With what brave and silent hearts they face the sequel too! The mother
of Sub-Lieutenant So-and-So receives letters from him nearly every other
week. Such cheerful little pencil scribblings! “Dearest Mother, I have a
jolly comfortable dug-out now--three planks and a truss of straw, and I
sleep on it like a top.” Or, perhaps, “You see they have sent me back to
the Base after six weeks under fire, and now I have a real, _real_ room,
and a real, _real_ bed!” The dear old darling! She puts her precious
letters on the mantelpiece for everybody to see, and laughs over them
all day long. But when night comes, and she is winding the clock before
going upstairs, thinking of the boy who not so long ago used to sleep on
her knees.... “Ah, me!”
And then the final trial, the last tragic test--the women are equal to
that also. First, the letter in the large envelope from the War
Office: “Dear Madam, the Secretary of State regrets to inform you that
Lieutenant So-and-So is reported killed in action on... Lord Kitchener
begs to offer you...” And then, a little later, from the royal palace:
“The King and Queen send you their most sincere....” Oh, if she could
only go out to the place where they have laid... But then the Lord will
know where to find His Own!
Somebody in Paris said the other day, “No one will ever make our women
cry any, more--after the war.” All the springs of their tears will be
dry.