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[Illustration: Frances Evelyn Warwick
_Photo, Sarony & Co., Ltd._]
A WOMAN AND THE WAR
by
THE COUNTESS OF WARWICK
Author of
"Warwick Castle and Its Earls," "Autobiography of Joseph Arch,"
"An Old English Garden"
New York
George H. Doran Company
Copyright, 1916, by George H. Doran Company
Printed in the United States of America
PREFACE
It is not without serious reflection that I have collected these
thoughts in war time to offer in book form to those who may care to
read and ponder them. They were written for the most part on the spur
of vital moments, when some of the tendencies of the evil times through
which we are living seemed to call for immediate protest. I have felt
more strongly than ever in the past two years that we are in danger
of accepting as something outside the pale of criticism the judgments
of those who lead, and sometimes mislead us. The support or hostility
of the newspaper press--in some aspects the greatest distorting
medium in the world--is still ruled by party considerations. Loyalty
or ill-will to the men in office colours all the views of those who
praise or blame, and it happens often that a good measure is damned
for what is best or lauded for what is worst in it. Again, I have felt
that while much of the fighting spirit of the country is subject to
army discipline, the tendency of government has been to make helpless
puppets of the citizens who remain behind the forces in the field.
In the near future, if we would save what is left of our heritage of
freedom, and would even extend the comparatively narrow boundaries that
existed before the autumn of 1914, we must relieve the press of the
self-conferred duty of thinking for us. We must not give our rulers a
blank cheque; their best efforts tend more to rouse our suspicions than
to compel our confidence.
Judging all the matters dealt with in these pages as fairly and
honestly as I can, I have found myself repeatedly in opposition to the
authorities. The legislation from which we have suffered since war
began, the efforts to relieve difficult situations and prepare for
obvious emergencies have savoured largely of panic and can boast no
more than a small element of statesmanship. So I have protested and
the protests have grown even beyond the limit of these book covers,
while an ever-swelling letter-bag has told me that I have interpreted,
however feebly, the thoughts, wishes, and aspirations of many thinking
men and women. We are on the eve of events that will demand of
evolution that it mend its paces or become revolution without more ado.
The international crisis and the national makeshifts must have proved
to the dullest that the world is out of joint.
I make no claim to traverse the whole ground, modesty forbids, and Mr.
Zangwill has accomplished the task in his "War for the World," the
most brilliant work that has seen the light since August, 1914. I have
sought to point out where and why and how we are moving backwards. I
can command no eloquence to gild my words, I cannot pretend to have
more to say than will have occurred to every man and woman of advanced
views and normal intelligence, but it does not suffice to think; one
must make thought the prelude of action. Strong in this belief I have
not hesitated to attempt something more than mere criticism. I cannot
wave flags, abuse enemies, or extol popular idols; and consequently
those who read will please accept these and other limitations.
FRANCES EVELYN WARWICK.
WARWICK CASTLE,
_August, 1916_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I KING EDWARD AND THE KAISER 1
II THE GREATEST FIGHT OF ALL 15
III ENGLAND'S DRINK LEGISLATION 24
IV WAR AND MARRIAGE 33
V NURSING IN WAR TIME 40
VI TWO YEARS OF WAR--WOMAN'S LOSS AND GAIN 49
VII CHILD LABOUR ON THE LAND 56
VIII COMRADES 64
IX THE CURSE OF AUTOCRACY 72
X WOMAN'S WAR WORK ON THE LAND 85
XI GERMAN WOMEN AND MILITARISM 101
XII YOUTH IN THE SHAMBLES 114
XIII THOUGHTS ON COMPULSION 124
XIV WOMEN AND WAR 133
XV RACE SUICIDE 142
XVI THE LESSON OF THE PICTURE THEATRE 158
XVII TRUTH WILL OUT 166
XVIII THE CLAIM OF ALL THE CHILDREN 175
XIX THE PRUSSIAN IN OUR MIDST 189
XX THE GROWN-UP GIRLS OF ENGLAND 197
XXI THE SOCIAL HORIZON 205
XXII HOW SHALL WE MINISTER TO A WORLD DISEASED? 215
XXIII HOW I WOULD WORK FOR PEACE 224
XXIV LORD FRENCH 234
XXV LORD HALDANE: SOME RECOLLECTIONS AND AN ESTIMATE 243
XXVI GROUNDS FOR OPTIMISM 250
XXVII ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS IN PEACE AND WAR 258
A WOMAN AND THE WAR
I
KING EDWARD AND THE KAISER
Since the war began I have read numerous extracts from the press of
Germany and from the contributions of German writers to American
papers stating in the most unequivocal terms that the late King Edward
devoted his political sagacity to the task of isolating Germany, that
he promoted alliances to that end, and that he deliberately sought to
compass the destruction of the German Empire.
At first I took these remarks to be no more than the rather unfortunate
outpourings of the uninformed, but I have seen of late that they have
been repeated with great insistence until there is a danger that they
will become an article of faith, not alone in Germany but in other
countries where Germans have a sympathetic following. I do not choose
as a rule to discuss questions of this kind, I prefer to leave popular
error to correct itself, but, having enjoyed the confidence of King
Edward before and after he came to the throne, having heard from his
own lips scores of times his attitude towards Germany and the Germans,
it seems to be a duty to set out the plain truth. I will do so in the
endeavour to sweep away one of the most ridiculous and mischievous
conceptions engendered by the present evil condition of things.
Had I ever imagined that the present crisis, or, for that matter,
any political development of the peaceful kind would have led to the
statements I seek to refute, how easy it would have been to jot down
the purport of conversations in which high policy was discussed!
Fortunately, I have an excellent memory and it is reinforced by letters
to which I have access, and I hope to commit the reports that have been
spread abroad to the oblivion that is their proper place. I can vouch
for the absolute truth of all I have to say, and I am writing with a
full sense of responsibility.
In the first place the intimate relations between the English and
German courts should be remembered; one of my earliest recollections is
of being taken to visit the old Empress Augusta at the German Embassy.
This was when I was a child, and I know I went many times, so her
visits would probably have been frequent. On my writing-table is the
silver and mother-of-pearl ornament that was her wedding present to
me. Everybody respected the old Emperor William, and everybody admired
the Crown Prince Frederick. When he married Queen Victoria's eldest
daughter, the Princess Royal, who became, after the death of Princess
Alice, King Edward's favourite sister, the relations between the two
courts could hardly have been more amicable. Queen Victoria loved
Germany and the Germans, she adored her grandson. In her eyes he could
do no wrong, she even went so far as to hold him up to her eldest son
as a model. On the other hand, the Princess of Wales, being a Dane,
could not forget or forgive the theft of Schleswig Holstein; her sister
the Russian Empress shared her suspicions of German intentions, but I
never heard of one or the other originating or encouraging anti-German
intrigues.
As the Kaiser grew up towards manhood his personality was hardly known;
his father, the Crown Prince Frederick, a far more noble figure,
monopolised attention. Beyond the fact that he was Queen Victoria's
favourite grandson nothing was known about William II. Nobody thought
that he would be called upon to rule before he was middle aged or
elderly; his father's illness was unsuspected. But if there was no ill
feeling at the English court, it is impossible to say the same of the
court at Berlin. The presence of the Princess Royal was resented; many
people believed, or affected to believe, that the marriage had been
designed to make Germany politically subservient to Great Britain. As
everybody knows, these feelings grew apace as soon as the old Emperor
William had breathed his last, and when, a few months later, the
Emperor Frederick passed away, the Anglophobia had spread throughout
the Court circles and the young Kaiser had been tainted with the Court
prejudice against his own mother. He did not treat her well; it is
not too much to say that he treated her badly. She, naturally enough,
complained to her brother, the Prince of Wales,--I have already said
that she was now his best loved sister. He was angry on her account and
spoke his mind. Relations between the young Kaiser and his uncle were
already strained. I must turn back a little to explain why.
In the early days, when King Edward had arrived at man's estate and
married, he sought to take a legitimate interest in state affairs.
He was disposed to study and to learn, and sought, not without ample
justification, to be admitted to the company of the little group
of statesmen who advised the Queen and ruled the Empire. But Queen
Victoria would have none of it. She practically refused her son access
to the Councils of State, she instructed her Ministers to keep all
state papers from him; within the compass of a limited monarchy she was
determined to rule alone.
Her eldest son, finding that he was not to be accepted as a worker,
decided to amuse himself. If he could not direct public policy he would
at least direct fashion, if he could not assist the Foreign Office he
could at least enable English Society to take rank among the smartest
in Europe. So the Marlborough House set came into existence, and with
its rise came the first beginnings of the Kaiser's criticism. There
were two grounds for this.
In the first place King Edward's personal popularity was unbounded;
wherever he went he charmed women and men, and it was quite clear
that he would be a force to be reckoned with in diplomacy, when in
the fullness of time he ascended the throne; on the other hand, the
Kaiser lacked all the qualities that his uncle possessed in abundance.
Hard-working and conscientious, he was petulant, exacting, and
uncertain. Naturally, then, he found matter for grievance against the
uncle who, seemingly without effort, swayed opinion and enjoyed esteem.
Jealousy was the origin of disagreement.
There is another side to the antagonism. The Kaiser was always a very
strict-living, sober-minded man, a model husband and father, honestly
representative of the domestic virtues in the highest degree. King
Edward, largely by force of circumstances, lived a life of gaiety
and pleasure; whatever he did he did thoroughly; as it might not be
work, it was play. He raced, yachted, shot, played cards, entertained,
visited all his friends, and had a wide field of friendships. Though
shrewd, worldly, and quick witted, he made certain mistakes, and these
gave his nephew an opportunity that was quickly taken. Perhaps the
Kaiser would utter a criticism on the spur of the moment, it would be
taken up, magnified, polished, and brought over to King Edward in the
finished and augmented state. By the way, I am referring, unless I
state the contrary, to the years when King Edward was Prince of Wales.
I use his final title to cover all the years with which I am dealing.
King Edward had great gifts, and when the time came to turn them to the
best account, they were invaluable to his country but, as I have said,
he was not infallible. He made mistakes.
Tranby Croft provided one, his friendship for Baron Hirsch provided
another; for the Baron, though he may have been a charming
man-certainly his wife was a charming woman and a dear friend of
mine--was an unscrupulous financier who had accumulated a vast fortune
by curious and unclean methods of which the full story cannot be told,
and yet for all his faults, he was not an ignoble man, but in some
phases of his complex nature an idealist and philanthropist.
Berlin sneered at Baron Hirsch, Vienna was actually shocked, for in the
Dual Empire a man is judged by his quarterings, and even if he should
have made a huge fortune honestly and lacks quarterings he is less than
the penniless, vicious, and brainless person of high descent.
King Edward smiled at the rage and spite of Vienna and Berlin. He
remarked to one of his intimates that he could not allow either capital
to choose his friends for him, and in order that there might be no
mistake about his intentions he accepted an invitation from Baron
Hirsch to shoot with him on his great estates at Eichorn. I don't know
whether Baron Hirsch asked any Austrians or Germans, certainly none
accepted the invitation, and King Edward found, much to his amusement,
that all the other guests were Englishmen. He merely laughed, enjoyed
his visit, and then, after it was over, visited the Baron in Paris,
to the intense annoyance of the Jockey Club there. Perhaps it was not
altogether wise to defy the conventions, but of course English Society
has never been quite as exclusive as that of Berlin or Vienna.
The Kaiser chafed at his uncle's association with a mushroom financier
whose record was only too well known, he chafed too when King Edward
spent long hours at Homburg with the Empress Frederick who had a castle
there in the days of her widowhood. The love between the brother and
sister was very beautiful. She confided all her troubles to him from
the early days, for oddly enough when there were family quarrels
Queen Victoria sided with her grandson against the Princess Royal,
but it is only right and fair to say that the Kaiser reciprocated
her affection, and his grief when she passed away was heartfelt.
The Homburg meetings were gall and wormwood to the Kaiser and they
renewed the old fear of his uncle's popularity. When instead of going
to Homburg in Germany, King Edward went to Marienbad in Austria there
was still more uneasiness in Berlin's governing circles, for King
Edward's extraordinary personal magnetism was known and feared, he was
credited with having the power if he chose to exercise it of seriously
disturbing the foundations of the Triple Alliance. The Kaiser need not
have been uneasy, his uncle did not enter into political conversations.
It will be seen then that the disagreement between uncle and nephew had
been little more than a sort of family quarrel intensified by the high
standing of both parties. I have heard King Edward speak angrily of his
nephew, but only because of the way he treated his mother, the personal
gibes and criticisms did not often sting him, he merely said his nephew
was suffering from megalomania and had not learned to control a rather
unruly tongue. In all the years I have passed mentally in review I do
not remember hearing King Edward utter a single sentence of ill-will to
Germany.
The Kaiser's visits to England in the earlier days have left no special
impression upon my memory. I remember dancing opposite to him in a
quadrille at a Court Ball in Buckingham Palace and being present at
a dinner-party given for him in a private house. His friends among
the ladies of England were the wives of members of the Royal Yacht
Squadron; among these was Lady Ormonde. She used to stay at Kiel for
the yachting festival, as guest of the Kaiser with her husband who was
then Commodore of the R.Y.S.
In all his criticisms King Edward was scrupulously fair. Even in
discussing his sister's relations with her son he would add that
they were both strong personalities with different sympathies and
view-points, and that sustained agreement between them was probably
impossible. He admired the Kaiserin frankly, as all must who know the
gracious and kindly lady who in her own quiet and unobtrusive fashion
has filled her life with good deeds.
Relations between King Edward and his nephew improved immensely when
Queen Victoria died. Not only did the Kaiser come over to the funeral,
but he seemed on that occasion to have laid aside the brusqueness that
had marked earlier visits. All the Court noticed it, and King Edward
commented upon it to me with very evident pleasure. The process of
improvement in relations started about 1899. Through the Boer War
events had been moving towards a reconciliation.
The Kaiser's correct behaviour during the war, which his frenzied
telegram on the occasion of the Raid had done something to bring about,
placated King Edward, and after Queen Victoria's death relations
between the two men improved sensibly. The Kaiser either limited his
criticisms or saw to it that they were not indiscreetly uttered. The
old friendliness was resumed, and things became as they were after the
attempt on King Edward's life in Denmark when the Kaiser left Berlin
and met the royal train at the frontier station to congratulate his
uncle upon his escape and inquire after his health. King Edward wrote
to me from Sandringham on his return. After thanking me for a letter
and telegram of congratulations, he said that the Kaiser came all
the way from Berlin to meet his train at Altona and inquire after his
health. He thought that was very kind of the Kaiser.
I remember that the Kaiser's later visits to England were quite a
success. King Edward remarked to me, when his nephew was staying at
Highcliffe in Hampshire for his health, how greatly he had improved in
manner, how courteous and considerate he was, and how much of the old
unrest and irritability seemed to have gone. Between King George, Queen
Mary, and the Kaiser, relations could not have been more friendly,
and when King Edward and Queen Alexandra went to Berlin he thoroughly
enjoyed his visit, and told me as much on his return.
How then, it may be asked, shall we account for the Anglo-French
convention of 1904, and for the meeting between King Edward and the
Tsar at Réval when the foundations of friendship between England and
Russia were laid? In Germany it is believed that these arrangements
were aggressive in their intention and demonstrated King Edward's
hostility. In both cases King Edward, absolutely faithful to the
Constitution, followed the advice of his ministers, and did not discuss
his personal predilections at all. After the Réval meeting I asked him
his view of the political situation, and as far as my memory serves
this is what he said: "Germany is our commercial rival, she has a
magnificent business aptitude, she might develop with growing riches
and a few adventurous statesmen a rivalry of another kind. The Réval
meeting, with the French convention, will I hope put an end to the
possibility. But nothing has been done that stands in the way of a good
understanding between London and Berlin. I believe all sensible men
desire peace. We have no quarrel with Germany or any other power."
I may add that King Edward admired Germany almost as much as he loved
France. The thoroughness of the German business method, the rejection
of everything slovenly in thought and action, impressed him greatly,
and he once made a remarkable statement to me. It was in London in the
late winter of 1909-10, a few months before he died. He came to tea
and talked of German administration. "Do you know," he said, "that if
this country could be controlled in the same way, we should be all the
better for it? If we could be ruled by Germans just long enough to
have our house put in order"--he paused, and added with a laugh--"You
know the trouble is that if we once had them we could not get rid of
them." This statement was made during our last conversation; I never
saw King Edward again, but his words should be sufficient to show that
he was not animated by an ill-feeling towards the German Empire. They
are hardly the words of a man who plotted against the land ruled over
by the son of the woman who was at once his favourite sister and most
devoted friend.
Age, and an experience of great affairs not to be excelled by any
of his contemporaries, had made King Edward a sane and philosophic
observer. He possessed very few prejudices, and he never allowed his
feelings as a man to stand between him and his duties as a king. But if
his personal views had affected political issues it would never have
been to Germany's detriment, for every criticism that I heard him utter
over a long period of years has been set out here. He had a real love
for his French and Austrian friends and a quiet respect for his German
acquaintances. I may add that King Edward not only hated war and would
have been most reluctant to take any step that might ensue it, but
he regarded people with bellicose ideas as fit occupants of asylums.
The fine fabric of civilisation impressed him, and he saw in war the
blind force that would destroy it and leave the world laboriously and
painfully to rebuild. His real interests lay in the direction of social
reform, and he even found the trappings of state, in which as a rule
he took delight, a little heavy when he realised that they deprived
him of the right of free speech enjoyed by the humblest citizen of the
realm. He made it his business to know what Germany was doing to solve
the problems of unemployment, housing, and factory management, and
in the last years of his life his intercourse with Liberal statesmen
quickened his interest in plans for the betterment of the class that
does the work. Time out of mind he spoke of what Germany had achieved
in this direction, always with the frank admiration that only a good
sportsman can give under all circumstances. Far from seeking to bring
war about, it is with me an article of faith that had he been living
in July, 1914, there would have been no war. The immense personal
influence he wielded would have been thrown into the scales on the
side of peace, he would have reconciled differences at the eleventh
hour for he was _persona gratissima_ in every court of Europe, and
there is not among the rulers of Europe one who would not have listened
when he spoke. Those who suggest that he helped to build the pyre upon
which the best and bravest of nearly all the nations of the world are
now being consumed, do but slander the dead and testify to their own
ignorance.
II
THE GREATEST FIGHT OF ALL
In his famous essay on Mr. Montgomery's poems Macaulay speaks of the
degradation to which those must submit who are resolved to write when
there are scarcely any who read.
It seems a little idle to suggest that two years of war have availed to
reduce readers to vanishing point; indeed, editors and publishers of
daily and weekly papers testify to an increase of circulation. Paper is
harder to obtain than readers; the cause of trouble is that the written
word is all of one kind. The love of sensation, strongest amongst those
whose mental equipment is of the slightest, is being sedulously catered
for, the townsman requires tales of the slaughter of his enemies to
give a flavour to his breakfast, his lunch, and his dinner.
Even the countryman, who with no more than one newspaper in twenty-four
hours must spread sensation over a day, seems to insist upon flamboyant
headlines and cheerful tales of slaughter. Mild-mannered folk, who
would turn vegetarians rather than help to kill the meat that is set
upon their tables, may be heard enthusiastically calculating the
enemy's losses in terms of six or seven figures, and discussing the
hairbreadth incidents of flood and field as though they themselves
carried a more dangerous weapon than an umbrella and had faced more
serious troubles in the normal day than an ill-cooked meal, an
appointment lost, or a train missed. In short, people who must stay
at home because they are no longer of fighting age, strength, or
inclination, are being encouraged to act as the audience. Happily,
perhaps, for them, they cannot see the actual performance, but they
can hear about it, and, as a rule, they are told what their minds are
best prepared to receive. Truth has received instructions to remain at
the bottom of her well or risk court-martial. Life is reduced to its
primitive elements; war, while it dignifies many of those who take an
active part in it, does little more than degrade the constant reader
of papers of the baser and most popular kind. It is to be feared that
the sane view of life is never the appealing one, the untrained eye can
see trees but never a wood, and the man in the street is nearest to the
editorial heart because his name is legion, and the advertiser says to
him, as Ruth said to Naomi, "Whither thou goest, I will go."
In the early nineties there was a literary movement of great promise
in London; the Boer War extinguished it; in the last half-dozen years
we have seen a brisk effort towards the development of a national or
even international social programme; this war may set it back for a
generation; War is ever fatal to ideas. Men whose minds were being
turned slowly and reluctantly to questions they had been educated to
ignore are now concerned with two problems--winning the war and making
good the injuries it has entailed. The increased taxation, the business
losses, seemingly irrecoverable, will develop a certain natural
hardness of fibre, and there is a danger that the social movements,
slow in times of prosperity, will halt in the times to come.
The season of trouble for those "resolved to write" is upon the
publicists of the social reform movement. They must be prepared for
hard knocks and for all the arts of misrepresentation and vilification.
The general reader will first denounce, then ignore and finally
listen to the survivors of the common-sense crusade. The people who
start to state facts will be the leaders of a forlorn hope, and our
brave fellow-countrymen did not face as great an odds in the retreat
from Mons. A fight for the universal reduction of armaments and for
the remodelling of the existing system of government will be met by
indignant cries for conscription and less freedom. The ubiquitous hand
of the German will be traced in every line that pleads for toleration,
good will, and the removal of all autocracies under whatever name; any
suggestion of a return to Christian teaching will be denounced as the
highest immorality. There are many who hold that a conscript Army and
a larger Navy would have saved us from this war; they cannot see that
we should have done no more than postpone the evil day until it dawned
upon Europe in a still greater magnitude of evil, if this be possible,
and that our commercial class, impeded by forced service, would have
been unable to provide the means to pay the bill. The ulcer of European
armament has burst at last, and the remedy proposed for the debilitated
body of the Western World will be a still larger ulcer to take the
place of the one that demanded so much labour to feed and so much
life-blood to cleanse it.
In the same way the effort to make democracy articulate, to raise the
standard of the national intelligence, will be fiercely resisted by
those who believe that the way of the world in the past must be the way
of the world in the future. The attempt to improve upon the methods
of our fathers is tolerated in the worlds of science, medicine, and
commerce, the innate conservatism of government is sacrosanct. To
educate millions of able-bodied men, not to the fighting pitch but
beyond and above it, will be denounced as high treason, and will be
opposed by autocracies, bureaucracies, cannon-makers and publicans
alike. A rise to the heights of sanity is, must be, the death of vested
interests, and every force to the hands of authority will be employed
to check the dreaded movement. According to a well-established formula,
the method of attack will be to denounce very bitterly suggestions that
have never been put forward and principles that have no adherents. In
this way issues can be confused and obscured.
To be drunk with victory or dazed by defeat is to be particularly
sensitive to the more brutal cries of war. The victor desires the
full reward of good fortune, as Germany did in 1871; the vanquished
nurses revenge, as France has done ever since the end of the struggle
that found her so ill-prepared. Counsels of moderation are declared
to be inadmissible until the _status quo ante_ has been restored, and
every force that makes for the spoliation of the simple by the worldly
wise takes the field against common sense. The appeal of the dead is
forgotten by all living save the woman whose mission it is to raise
another generation for destruction; the lessons of history cannot be
recalled by those who have never learned them.
Against all the difficulties outlined here, and many another that need
not be set down, a small body of men and women, inspired by a great
ideal, must labour in every country that has seen war or even realised
its significance. They must speak and write in the face of fierce
opposition and contempt, for war has swept away many of the landmarks
they had already set up, together with many of those who had learned
to regard them; they must face the truth that many a genuine altruist,
shocked unutterably by the revelations of the war, is a little ashamed
of his earlier altruism and anxious to forget its existence. They must
be prepared for a certain coarsening of the nation's moral fibre, for
a long-lived return to the more brutal outlook associated with the
Napoleonic era. In some countries revenge will have become an article
of faith, in others suspicion will be a no less dominant factor. The
whole mental currency will have suffered debasement, and it will be
difficult for some vices to be recognised as anything worse than
virtues enforced upon a nation by the hazard of war.
If the truth about the whole conflict that has laid waste so great a
portion of the civilised world could be ascertained and agreed, the
difficulties would tend to disappear, responsibility would be fixed.
Unfortunately, agreement is beyond the generation's reach; we may
remember that there are many who still regard the seizure of Silesia
by Frederick the Great as a genuine expression of Prussia's mission,
and that history is written to suit the country to which it is intended
to appeal. Limitations, whether geographical, political, or social, are
the sworn foes of truth, and in the effort to remove them an appeal to
international common sense affords the best hope of success.
For many of the world's thinkers who stay at home to-day, neither
physically fit to fight nor financially able to succour distress, there
is this great work waiting to be done. They cannot fight soldiers, but
they can fight rancour, malice, and uncharitableness. They cannot fill
hungry bodies, but they may help to feed starved minds. They can bring
a light to those who walk in darkness and make articulate the thoughts
that stir many a heart and brain. They can give courage to those who
fear the sound of their own voices and have not the strength of mind to
say the words that may not be spoken without offence to the unthinking.
When fighting is over--and it will pass, as all tragedies must, though
it seems to fill a lifetime while it lasts--the greatest questions of
strife will clamour for a wise solution. People write glibly about the
war that is to end war, but let us remember that this issue depends
not upon statesmen but upon the democracies of all the combatant and
neutral countries. What we want is a modern Peter the Hermit or two
in every country of Europe, to preach the crusade of Christianity and
to bring home to the world at large the price of war. There is no
material reward for this service, and even recognition is likely to be
posthumous; the courage required is of the fine kind that moves alone
over uncharted ground. But, just as a kingdom at war calls for men to
man the trenches and face annihilation with the smiling cheerfulness
that robs death of half its sting and all its terror, so a return of
peace calls for its heroes of thought to do battle with all the evils
that make it possible for men who have no quarrel to assemble in their
millions for mutual destruction.
The whole system of government that makes these conditions and must be
indicted for them is rotten to the core, but it is enthroned in power,
and will not deal lightly, or even justly, with those who assail it.
Against this hard truth we have to remember that every evil that has
been subdued since the dawn of history has been fought in the first
instance by one man or a handful of men. If we have only a small
proportion of thinkers to-day we have more than there were of old time,
when the simplest education was the advantage of the few. Paganism
was a more terrible force than militarism in the years of the advent
of Christ, and it was overthrown by the labours of one man and his
tiny following. To-day democracy is all powerful, if and when it can
be taught to open eyes and ears. Those who will undertake the perilous
task may make this war, whatever and whenever its termination, a
fruitful thing for the generations to come, while, on the other hand,
if the lessons are not read aright, we may look to pass from tragedy to
tragedy, until all civilisation is submerged.
III
ENGLAND'S DRINK LEGISLATION
It is hard to pierce the thick cloud of cant in which, as a nation,
we are all too apt to shroud ourselves. I do not think we are
hypocritical, although that charge is laid to our door by all our
ill-wishers, but I do believe we are hopelessly conventional, and
seldom muster up the courage necessary to call a spade a spade.
I have been re-reading of late, the endless comment upon the drink
legislation, some of it frankly inspired by publicans and sinners--I
mean distillers--some of it the pure outpouring of cranks, most of it
prejudiced, or uninformed, or both. We deplore drunken habits, but
when Sir Cuthbert Quilter tried to persuade Parliament to pass a Pure
Beer Bill he met with no success. The worst crimes against the person,
the common and criminal assaults on women and children, are largely
due to drink, and of this drink raw and crude spirits are the worst
part; but we do nothing to protect our poorer classes from the poison.
To introduce "square face" gin among the black population of some of
our possessions is a deadly offence, the punishment is heavy, swift,
and certain, but to poison the workers of our great manufacturing
centres is business, and many quite worthy people believe that "when
Britain first at Heaven's command arose from out the azure main" it was
to do business, and as much of it as possible. Naturally it follows
that the fight against cant is all the harder because most of us do
not recognise cant when we hear it. I remember how when temperance
legislation was first mooted as a war measure many friends who can
afford to buy pure French wines and spirits of great age and mellowness
solemnly assured me that temperance legislation is mere foolishness,
and that they themselves are living proofs that moderation, good
health, and a wise activity march hand-in-hand.
But of late years a certain number of women of all classes have been
drinking more than is good for them, and since the war broke out the
working women's temptations in this direction and the opportunity to
indulge them have grown side by side.
The majority of working women are as sober as the majority of every
class, but, though there are thousands of temperate women, they
are matched by thousands of intemperate ones, the number has grown
apace, and I feel they should be saved from themselves. The sober
classes cannot resent restriction. It leaves them where they were. The
intemperate classes may resent restriction, but it remains necessary in
their own interests.
I don't suppose many people read Harrison Ainsworth's novels to-day,
but I remember a striking passage in "Jack Sheppard," where Mrs.
Sheppard justifies herself to her friend Wood, the carpenter, who has
told her that Gin-lane is the nearest road to the churchyard. It is
worth quoting--
"It may be; but if it shortens the distance and lightens the journey I
care not," retorted the widow.... "The spirit I drink may be poison--it
may kill me--perhaps it is killing me, but so would hunger, cold,
misery--so would my own thoughts. I should have gone mad without it.
Gin is the poor man's friend--his sole set-off against the rich man's
luxury.... When worse than all, frenzied with want, I have yielded to
horrible temptation and earned a meal the only way I could earn one ...
I have drunk of this drink and forgotten my cares, my poverty, and my
guilt."
The working women whose husbands are at the war have many excuses.
They are deprived of their husbands, and--though there is no need
to emphasise the point it cannot be overlooked--their lives are a
drab monotony of toil, their surroundings are often of the most
unfavourable description, the only restraint that can reach them is
self-restraint, and their training has done little to provide it. The
public-house offers companionship, a brief surcease of anxiety, light
and warmth. Many are enervated by much child-bearing, worn out by much
house or factory work. They meet temptation and succumb, but let us
remember that in classes removed from the same form of temptation there
is no lack of intemperance. A very small dose of bad spirits is enough
to provide the cheap anodyne some are seeking, and under the influence
of drink they are apt to lose their self-respect. The craving for drink
grows with what it feeds on, and in all too many cases the hold upon
self-respect falters and is lost. We have sent very many men to the
war, but enough and more than enough remain behind to take advantage of
women who have lost all or even a part of their normal control.
In touch with serious workers in many of the fields of endeavour that
make brief oases in the deserts of industrialism, I know that both
drink and prostitution have increased since war began, and I know
that drink is the great support of prostitution, and that thousands
of women of the class we must pity most have a natural sense of shame
that drink destroys. If the demons of ruin--gin and whisky--had not
been busy pouring gold into the national treasury, day by day and year
by year, they would have been exorcised long since. But business is
business, and the gentlemen whose activity corrupts the country can
always talk of freedom and liberty, and declare to thunders of applause
that Britons never shall be slaves. The possibility of being free to
be a slave to drink never occurs to them, or if it does they forget to
mention it.
But while I welcome legislation that will tend to keep women sober,
and believe that our sex stands in need of more sobriety by reason of
its sedentary life, I am far from thinking that the law that is good
for women is necessarily good for man. The conditions are altogether
different. The self-respecting artisan and skilled worker drink less
than ever they did. The men who are doing the country's work to-day
in all the armament manufacturing areas need a stimulant, need it far
more than the prosperous City man, the real toper of our times. He will
drink champagne and whisky with his lunch, and, having had quite enough
of both, will damn the working classes for being given to the use of
intoxicants. I have been through some of those great works in the
north, where labour at and round the furnaces is unremitting, and where
to-day the pace has been increased to the extreme limit of physical
power. To preach temperance to the armament worker is an absurdity; if
he is not to be stimulated according to his needs his hours will need
to be greatly diminished; it is impossible for him to give out unless
he takes in. Why, in the name of all that is sensible, should he not
have that which will help him? Why should he have remained so long at
the mercy of cheap, vile spirits that are a more or less effective
poison? Why should he be at the mercy of the people who, having little
hard work to do, can thrive comfortably upon lemonade and barley water?
The manufacturers spare no pains to obtain the very finest material for
their own work; if it is necessary to spend a few or many thousands of
pounds upon new plant the money is forthcoming without a murmur. Does
it pass the wit of these sapient people to give to humanity a little of
the thought they give to raw material? Can they not see that the best
and purest drink that the new regulations permit is within reach of the
workers, and that the rest is out of reach?
It has long been the custom of the capitalist class in normal times to
give the workman bad drink with one hand and to raise the other hand
with an expression of holy horror against the sin of drunkenness, quite
ignoring the truth that the quality, rather than the quantity, that
people drink is often the deciding factor--that every class drinks,
and that if the vice looks worse in one class than another it is
because the poorer the man or woman, the viler the alcohol supplied to
them. There are so many excellent people who preach temperance and live
on the dividends of drunkenness, there are so many who believe that a
reasonable excess in matters of drink is a form of manly virtue, and
there are yet more who believe honestly in moderation, and do not see
that their good brand of claret, burgundy, or brandy should be denied
to them, seeing they have never abused it.
For myself, I drink a glass of good wine; failing that I am content
with pure water. If we could give our working classes nothing but the
best, and at a price within their means, I should look askance at
legislation, of whatever kind; but I recognise the old truth that the
destruction of the poor is their poverty, and that the working man
and woman have always been penalised, and will continue to be, until
Government recognises its responsibilities, and rides its supporters of
the drink trade with a very tight rein.
Above all I feel that the new legislation that has first restricted
and then diluted the working man's drink must not be regarded as an
isolated instance, but as part of the vast changes that the war will
ensue. The working man will not forego his legitimate refreshment; it
is for the Government to see that it is pure and reasonably harmless.
Good beer in moderation will not hurt anybody; bad spirits are the
foundation of disease and crime, and, in their silent fashion, are
always fighting against the best interests of the State. Sometimes,
when I read that the perpetrator of some ghastly crime has been
sentenced to death or a long term of imprisonment, with all the pomp
and circumstance of our criminal courts, I find myself wondering what
poison was administered to him in some squalid public-house, and who
among those who rejoice that justice has been done, or vengeance
executed, have actually derived financial benefit from the drink that
turned a man into a beast. We punish the poor fool with a diseased
appetite, we confer some honour or reward upon the prime offender. Then
when our enemies say that we are hypocrites we are indignant because of
their injustice, or contemptuous of their ignorance, knowing as we do,
that God is in Heaven, and that business is business.
Finally, and quite apart from the immediate significance of the
drink question, I rejoice in any legislation that will help the
working-classes to the full possession of their faculties. If drink
helps them to forget intolerable surroundings, insufficient pay, the
deprivation of their fair share of the world's beauties, let us be
glad that it is taken from them in its worst forms. They will see with
clear eyes and with wiser heads, they will no longer be at the mercy
of those who pander to their weakness in order to keep them weak. They
will enter upon the great struggle that lies before democracy with
stronger will and stronger armour. They have surrendered much of their
power to the public-house, and the longer its shutters are up the more
leisure they will have to see that there are better things in life, the
greater will be their determination to share them with the fortunate
classes.
There is a time of trouble in store; they cannot be too well equipped
to meet it.
IV
WAR AND MARRIAGE
The problem that faces a State when it sends its best and most virile
men to kill and to be killed has certain aspects that few have the
courage to handle. For long years, while Europe was an armed camp, the
claims of love were admitted amid the demands of war, but now that
the dreaded era--which each nation was hurrying through the medium
of extravagant armaments and secret diplomacy--has come upon us, we
are without a definite plan for securing the continuity of the best
elements in the race. If I thought that this appalling war were no
more than the prelude to others, I would pray that every woman might
be sterile, but hope, our last and eternal refuge against the ills
of life, suggests that this most terrible cataclysm will strengthen
the hands of democracy and give it the strength to resist further
sacrifices in years to come. While the grass grows the horse starves,
and while we think of the generation to come, thousands, hundreds of
thousands of Europe's best and bravest lie in their hasty graves, and
the cry of Mother Earth is still "they come." What has been done by our
rulers to see that the fittest shall leave behind them some to take a
share of the white man's burden?
Very little. The men of the middle and upper classes who happened to
be engaged have in very many cases been wise and patriotic enough to
marry, and their wives have proved themselves as full of courage as of
love. In order to marry, men have often been obliged to pay the Church
an absurd tax, for the Church has shown itself quite inadequate to the
occasion, and trumpery restrictions, meaningless in times of peace and
a scandal in time of war, have not been relaxed. The poor man cannot
afford a special license, and in many instances has married without
the aid or sanction of the Church. As we know, the State decided to
recognise the unmarried wives of the nation's brave defenders, a
courageous and proper step that evoked the wildest protests from the
narrow-minded, the "unco guid," and the fanatics who believe that man
was made for morality rather than that morality was made for man. They
did not pause to reflect that our absurd and antiquated divorce laws
are the chief cause of illicit unions, and that divorce is hardly less
hard for the poor to obtain than are decent housing, warm clothing,
and nourishing food. Happily, in making this concession to the men
who are offering their lives to their country, the genius of red tape
contrived to assert itself. Hard though it may be to realise, it was
for some time a fact that, if a man home on leave married his unmarried
wife in order that his children might bear his name, his wife's
allowance ceased because he came under the head of those who married
after enlisting! The very quintessence of stupidity could have achieved
nothing finer.
Unfortunately the majority of those at the front are unmarried. It was
considered sufficient to find them physically sound, to vaccinate and
inoculate them and then to send them to take their chance. The question
of the years to come was never considered. There is no department
of War Office or Admiralty that embraces eugenics. I have looked in
vain through the speeches of statesmen for a single recommendation
to our defenders to marry and leave behind them some pledge of their
affection, some asset for the real national treasury that does not
consist of gold, as is popularly supposed, but of vigorous men and
women as anxious to live for their country as they are willing to die
for it. To be sure every wife would have cost the country three pounds
a month for the term of the war, and this thought may have given our
prudent legislators pause; but I venture to suggest that a wife as a
national asset is cheap, even at that price.