inevitable and unsatisfactory. The billeting of great masses of
virile young men in various centres throughout the country, and the
opportunities that the new life has afforded resulted in an increase
in the number of illegitimate births. I have heard of this from many
quarters, and have every reason to believe, in spite of denials, that
no district in which large numbers of soldiers have been gathered
together will prove an exception to the general rule. Whatever the
moral aspect of the question, it cannot be overlooked or ignored.
I deplore the promiscuity, though I believe that a wise and daring
statesmanship, ready to meet new conditions with new remedies, would
have avoided it; but I would like to plead for the foolish mothers,
often little more than girls, and for the babes, who in many instances
will never see a father's face.
I am not urging humanity in place of morality, for most people lack the
moral courage to listen to such a plea; it is rather in the interests
of the State that I urge the proper, and even generous, treatment of
all those who, before this year is ended, will have entered the world
unwanted and unwelcomed. They will be the children of men in the first
flush of manhood, of men not lacking in courage and character (or they
would not have joined the colours), of men whose fault was that they
could not resist temptation in its least resistible form. We must think
of the psychology of the soldier who knows that in a few short weeks he
may be among the nameless dead, who has embarked upon the greatest of
all adventures, and says, "Let me rejoice and be merry, for to-morrow
I die." Doubtless in many cases he will return and marry the mother of
his child if fate permits, often he will not return, and a soldier's
death may well clear a soldier's name.
It should not outrage morality to see that the children, whether they
be many or few, born of men gone to the front should be looked after by
the State where the mother is unable adequately to provide for them,
and it should be possible, too, in cases where the father returns and
marries the mother of his child, that such marriage should make the
offspring legitimate. It is not a large concession; in many European
countries, France included, marriage atones for previous indiscretions,
and if this were so in England there would be a much greater tendency
to regularise irregular unions for the children's sake. If nothing is
done hundreds of young mothers who succumbed to exceptional temptation
will be outcasts. Under the most favourable normal conditions, the lot
of the little one will be hard. When this hideous war is over, I would
like the regimental officers to put the facts fairly and squarely to
their men, to ask them to remember the girls they left behind them, and
to be able to assure them, in the name of the Government, that if they
would, on their return, marry the mother of their child, that child
would become _ipso facto_ legitimate.
I am quite sure that many excellent people will find this plea immoral,
that they will say it is condoning irregular sex union, that it is
removing the burden from those who have transgressed. I deny these
suggestions even before they are made. To my mind there is more
immorality, more glaring offence to the Creator in one battlefield full
of dead and mangled humanity, than in all the illegitimate children who
will have come crying into our tear-stricken world before the war draws
to its end. Those who rule over Europe and, being unable to settle
their differences, sent millions of men, who have no quarrel, to deface
the earth and slaughter one another, are morally responsible for every
change in the normal life of mankind. Those who replenish the earth are
better than those who destroy it.
War is a monstrous immorality that seeks to destroy the world; the
illicit unions, to which I refer in the interest of those who pay
the penalty--the mother and the child--are a minor immorality from
which, with a little care, a little loving-kindness, and a little
fore-knowledge, much good, much deep morality may spring.
There is not much time to lose; there will be much opposition to
overcome, and the work of helping the helpless will be widely condemned
by those who, having no feelings, are always able to control them.
But the effort is worth making, and so I plead here, first, for ample
facilities for those who wish to marry before they go abroad; secondly,
for the legitimation of the children whose fathers, now at the war,
come back and marry the mothers, and, lastly, for some special care of
the mother and children themselves.
V
NURSING IN WAR TIME
Abuses cling to a crisis as barnacles to a ship, and every aspect of
war has its own peculiar abuses. While millions do their duty with
quiet heroism, there is always a minority that takes advantage, that
corrupts others--or itself. Some believe that fraud and foolishness
stay at home, that they cannot approach the field of arms, but this is
far from being the case.
My thoughts turn back to the South African war, when certain scandals
were supposed to have reached their zenith; I look around me to-day,
listen to the well-authenticated stories brought to me by relatives and
friends, and know that South Africa did not tithe the possibilities
of folly and excess. For once I am not pleading for my own sex, I
plead for one part of it against the other, for a majority against a
minority, for those who are doing what they are paid to do, against
those who are voluntary workers. The position comes a little strangely
to me when I look at it in this light, but the highly trained,
conscientious, painstaking hospital nurse, whose patient heroism
proclaims her a true follower of Florence Nightingale, has been exposed
to scandalous annoyance for no good purpose and to no useful end, and
I feel that I must plead her cause, since she is in the last degree
unlikely to plead it for herself.
Society women of a certain class made themselves so notorious in the
military hospitals and elsewhere during the South African war that at
least one General threatened to send them home and another refused to
allow any more to come out. As soon as the greatest struggle of our
history started in August, 1914, certain women of means and position
proceeded as silently and unostentatiously as was possible under the
circumstances to equip hospitals and to set about their self-appointed
work. They laboured conscientiously and sought no more publicity than
was necessary to enable them to collect money from philanthropists and
friends. They did their best, some were already qualified by previous
experience, others acquired their knowledge under the most trying
conditions possible. They have worked since war began, well content to
"scorn delights and live laborious days," some who are near and dear to
me have said that they have well-nigh forgotten the old life and the
comforts they deemed indispensable only a little while ago. I think it
may be claimed for them that they have played a good part, and that in
helping others they have not sought to draw attention to themselves or
minimise the credit due to the trained sisterhood of love and pity that
cheers the wounded and comforts the dying as "The Lady with the Lamp"
taught them to do in the far-off days of the great Crimean struggle.
They have made many friends and no enemies; the hero of the trenches
and the assaulting party has not given more to his country, for both
have given their all, the man his strength, the woman her practical
sympathy, and both a high degree of physical and moral courage.
Unfortunately there is in London to-day a very large company of young
women to whom war was little more than a new sensation. They are not
old enough to understand or young enough to be restrained. In normal
times they must be "in the movement," however foolish that movement may
be, and a war that staggers the old world and the new leaves them very
much where they were before. Under the rose they have not diminished
their aforetime gaiety, dances and dinner-parties have been the order
of the hour. They have not been trumpeted by the section of the Press
that delights in recording vain things, but those who view the currents
of London's social life know that I am writing the simple truth. There
is nothing to be said; let those laugh who may and can at such a
season, their laughter proclaims them what they are.
Unfortunately the people I have in mind have not been content to devote
themselves to brainless frivolity because they must sample every
sensation that the seasons provide, they invaded the sanctuary of the
hospital nurse. Scores found their way to the great London hospitals
in town to face what they were pleased to regard as training; I have
known some who have danced till 3 a.m. and have presented themselves
at the hospital at 8 o'clock! Everybody knows that the training of
a real hospital nurse is a very serious matter, that it makes full
demand upon physical and mental capacity, and that a long period is
required to bring the seed of efficiency to flower or fruit. The
social butterflies made no such sacrifices; they acquired a trifling
and superficial knowledge of a nurse's work, and then set their social
influence to work in order to reach some one of the base hospitals
where they might sample fresh experience. If they were really useful
there it would be unkind to offer a protest, but the general opinion is
that they did more harm than good. They subverted discipline, they were
a law to themselves, they were too highly placed or protected to be
called to order promptly, they showed neither the inclination nor the
capacity for sustained usefulness. To sit at the end of a bed and smoke
cigarettes with a wounded officer does not develop the efficiency of a
hospital.
One heard repeatedly in the early months of the war that this girl or
that had gone to the front, and one imagined devotion, self-sacrifice,
self-restraint, and a dozen kindred virtues. Unfortunately it is
chiefly in the realm of imagination that these virtues existed. For the
rest the interlopers wanted limelight, and plenty of it, their pictures
flooded the illustrated papers, and to read what was written of them
the inexperienced person might imagine that they were bearing the heat
and burden of the day, the solitude and anxiety of the night, while in
very truth they did no more than search for fresh sensation in an area
that should be sacred.
The type of mind that can seek refuge from self and boredom in such
surroundings cannot be stricken into seriousness; tragedy cannot reach
it. To do a very minimum of work, to attach themselves to the most
"attractive" cases, to carry small talk, gabble and gossip into places
where so many come to die, these were the main efforts of the young
society nurses, and all these outrages were carried on for months on
end. The real nurses and sisters were, I am told, bitterly indignant.
They asked no more than to be left alone to do their best; but they
knew how hard it is to make an effective protest, and they had little
or no time to do so. They recognised by reason of their training, the
full motive of the excursion into the region of suffering; that craving
for excitement, or, in bad cases, erotomania was the motive power. They
found their work impeded by the sisterhood of impostors that responds
so readily to a fashion of its own making, and their chief hope was
that this sensation might pass as so many others have passed, and that
the brainless, chattering, thoughtless, empty company, tired of blood
and wounds, would find some paramount attraction nearer home.
If there are any who are prepared to think I have overstated the case
or have traduced the young women who were lately "somewhere in France,"
let them find out from their particular heroine how much time she gave
to training, how she received her appointment, and how much real hard
work she did day by day. That a few have striven hard and nobly I
would be the last to deny, but these are not enough either to leaven
or purify the mass or to elevate the action of a class that might have
been better employed. Let us remember, too, that suffering is always
with us, and that even when war is over there will be far too much in
all the great centres of our own country. Are these butterfly nurses
prepared to remember in the future the profession they invaded? Will
they respond to the calls that are made to help, not young, attractive
and valiant men, but men, women, and children in every phase of
helplessness and hopelessness? I do not think so. There is neither
notoriety nor limelight in the sober, serious life of the hospital
nurse and sister. Above all there is a hard and necessary discipline
that calls for much moral courage to render it tolerable. Physical
courage is seldom lacking either in men or women who are well-bred, and
it may be freely granted that a certain measure was demanded even of
the butterfly nurses; but there is no redemption in this. To savour the
full sense of life without courage is impossible. One might as readily
make an omelette without breaking eggs. In this case it is courage
misdirected, energy misspent.
I feel very strongly about this scandal--so strongly that I have not
hesitated to write what is bound to offend some of my own friends; but
there are times when it is impossible to be silent if one would live
on tolerable terms with one's self. I feel that in these days woman is
called upon to make supreme sacrifices, that what she is giving even
now is less than will be required of her later on, that her war record
and her record when peace is about to return will be scanned closely
and critically by generations of really free women yet unborn. To know
of a blot upon woman's war-time service record and to make no attempt
to erase it is impossible. The record of the real nursing sisterhood is
brilliant in the extreme. Why should it be obscured for the sake of a
few highly placed and foolish young women who sought with the minimum
of labour to make the maximum of effect? It is unjust, ungenerous, and
altogether unworthy of the representatives of families that in many
cases have earned their ample honours legitimately enough.
Great Britain owes more than it can ever repay to the nursing
sisterhood; and it is intolerable that while their silent heroism
passes with so little recognition, any girl of good family who assumes
a uniform she has not won the right to wear should pose as the
representative of a sisterhood she is not worthy to associate with, of
whose tradition she is ignorant, of whose high discipline and complete
restraint she is intolerant. There are three classes of women in our
midst. The first earns reward and claims it, the second earns reward
and does not claim it, the last claims reward and does not earn it. Of
these classes the real nurse belongs to the second, and the butterfly
sisterhood to the third. At such a season as this there is no room in
our midst for the last, and it would be well for us all if authority
could spare a moment from manifold activities firmly and ruthlessly to
suppress its future activities. The hardship involved would be of the
slightest and the benefit serious and lasting.
VI
TWO YEARS OF WAR--WOMAN'S LOSS AND GAIN
The long-drawn-out agony of strife is now two years old and, as each
day adds its tale of slaughter to the incalculable total, we women may
pause in our war work for a moment and endeavour to estimate our own
position. We are no longer as we were, "like Niobe, all tears." Niobe,
if I remember rightly, taunted the gods, and for this offence all her
children were taken from her. We women did nothing to cause our own
misfortune; on the contrary, we strove in our little way to promote
peace, and to that end, above many others, we sought a hearing in the
councils of the nations.
But it was not to be. Our claims were ridiculed or ignored, and now
man-made war has swept over Europe like a blight, and we are left to
aid our country through the day and to mourn, when the long day's
work is done, for our fathers and brothers, our husbands and sons.
Yet perhaps the worst is not with those who mourn. The Immortals can
sport with them no longer. When the last of Niobe's twelve children had
passed, the limits of Latona's vengeance were reached. To have killed
the mother too had been a kindness.
The woman whose son or husband has been snatched from her knows the
fullness of sorrow, but anxiety for their fate must pass her by, while
those of us whose loved ones are on the battlefield would hardly hope
for a moment's peace of mind if it were not for the duties that engage
our working hours and sometimes earn dreamless sleep. In a wonderful
procession that tramped through muddy London under the rain a year ago
I saw a great petition by women for the means not only to serve, but to
forget.
After all, this claim to national service is no more than was advanced
in the old days when access to the heads of the Government was barred
and the hooligans of a great city were allowed to give full rein to
their impulses. Then our rulers thought they could dispense with women,
to-day we are recognised as indispensable. That is all, but it is very
much, and it sets me the question that is the title of this brief
paper--What has woman lost and what has woman gained?
She has lost much that was dearest to her, much that life is powerless
to replace. All the springs of her being have nourished the love that
she has given to her dear ones, to the man who was her choice, to
the son who fed upon her life. In many cases she has lived almost
entirely in her children, for the ties that bind her to the active
pleasures of life grow weak in conflict with the powers of maternity.
She has forgotten the brief years in which she lived for herself and
savoured all the sweets of existence, she has lived in her children,
happy chiefly in their happiness, ambitious only for their future and
concerned with the struggle for the freedom of her sex less on account
of her own generation than on account of that which is to follow. It
is woman's _rôle_ to give, it is man's _rôle_ to take, and custom has
staled for him the infinite variety of his taking. And now he has taken
so much that made life worth living that she seeks an anodyne for her
grief in giving him all that is left to give, the labour of her hands.
This is not only true of the women of England, it applies equally to
the women of every belligerent country, friend and foe alike, and it
may be said that between the women of the world there is a common
sacrifice and a common sympathy. All have suffered, all must continue
to suffer, on a scale that this old world of ours, with all its crimes
and tragedies beyond number and beyond belief, cannot parallel. It is
this truth that steadies our nerves and strengthens our hearts and sets
us looking, past the ultimate sacrifice, to what may lie beyond, not
for ourselves but for others.
All that we have has been taken or is being demanded of us. Is there in
all the world something to which we may look forward with confidence,
something that may justify hope? I think there is. Without any sense
of pride we may claim that woman has at least vindicated the claims
she advanced in those peaceful days that seemingly lie so far behind
us. She claimed that she was worthy to play her part in the conduct
of national life, that she was in very truth indispensable to it; she
was told, by brutal word or brutal deed, that her ambitions outran her
capacities. One year of war has given the lie to this assertion. Woman,
even before the coming of compulsion, encouraged her dearest to go,
if needs be, to their death, in a war for which she has no shadow of
responsibility before God or man. Conventions, agreements, treaties,
alliances, in all these things she has no share, but as soon as they
materialise in war she must pay the heaviest price.
The excitement and glory of a struggle in which the fighter feels that
he has surrendered his life to high causes is not for her, she must be
content with the pale reflex or with the tragedy. In her heart she may
know that man incurs the penalties of his ambitions or bad diplomacy or
unpreparedness for upheaval; but those penalties press heavier on women
than on men, for, even granting that the love of husband for wife and
wife for husband be equal, yet the passion of a mother for her child
and her grief when he is snatched from life in the hours when life is
unfolding all its possibilities, is something beyond the strength of
man to grasp.
But woman has not failed on account of her griefs, she has strangled
them--or she has tried to with all the strength that has been given to
her--and she has gone out into the market-place and said, "What more
do you require of me? Ask and I will give, direct and I will obey."
Hers has been the supreme sacrifice, and now at the moment when all
that seemed worth striving for had passed, she sees suddenly a fresh
horizon, the Pisgah view of the Promised Land.
She realises that man is at last beginning to understand and even to
acknowledge her place in the world, that the future cannot repeat the
errors of the past, that the day-dawn of her emancipation is visible.
This war, reconciling so many differences, rebuking so much pride and
bringing so many men and women face to face for the first time in their
life with life's actualities, has united all workers, irrespective
of class or sex. It is seen now that woman has a part to play in the
conduct of the State, and that there are spheres of activity in which
women might and must work for the common good. She and man together
must build up a new civilisation out of the wrecks of the old one,
not only here but throughout the strife-stricken world. Old barriers,
time-worn prejudices, a blind conservatism--what part have these in the
mental attitude of nations freed from overwhelming peril?
The soul of my sex would be as desolate to-day as the ruined cities of
Belgium, Poland, and Servia, were it not for the certain knowledge that
our sacrifice has not been made in vain. We have the right to hope that
our share in the work of the world is to be acknowledged at last, and
that the spheres of our activity are to be widened. In this way, and
only thus, we shall be able, in years that have yet to be, to influence
thought and to influence action, to bring a humanizing note into the
great chord of life. We shall strive through the sisterhood of women
towards the brotherhood of man, and we shall be working among those who
will be able to see for themselves what one-sided rule and one-sided
domination have done for progress and civilisation after their slow
ascent to a position that at best left so much to be desired.
The women of my generation will sow where they may not hope to reap,
but there is nothing new for woman in this experience. It is her
mission in this world to sacrifice herself, from the hour when she
accepts motherhood until the end. Her happiness is derived from the
contemplation of the happiness of others, she lives in the new lives
with which she renews the world. She will leave contentedly to others
the prizes for which she laboured in years of peace and suffered
through the season of war. It will be sufficient for her dimly to
foresee the time when those who have replaced her will give birth
to sons with no more pangs than Nature demands, and give birth to
daughters in the belief that they will not be widowed or fatherless or
childless through catastrophes of man's own making.
So it seems to me, looking back at the cruel record of two years,
that woman, for all her losses, has gained, that what she has lost is
matter for her private sorrow, and what she has gained is matter for
universal joy. She has found the uses of adversity, she has accepted
self-sacrifice for the sake of those who will be the better able to
enjoy the rich fruits of life. In this knowledge she will labour, for
the sake of this truth she will persevere with a confidence in the
future that no shifting tides of chance can shake. And her watchword in
the coming year is, Hope.
VII
CHILD LABOUR ON THE LAND