by autocratic monarchs. They will not stand in the scale against
the interests of their relatives, and in the courts of Europe it
is hard to find a ruler who is not a cousin of some sort to all
his fellow-sovereigns. Jealousy, ambition, ill report, dyspepsia,
disease, dementia, any one of these evils if it be backed by greed,
may avail to plunge innocent nations into the hell of war. Forces
that sway a republic are powerless in an absolute monarchy or in one
where servility and orthodoxy strive hand in hand. There are few
European rulers who have half the sagacity of the chief advisers
whom they may override at will. They are not as a rule men and women
of great culture, few if any have ideas that belong of right to the
twentieth century, their function has outgrown them, and the reverence
they demand and receive is founded very largely upon ignorance and
superstition.
To plunge Europe into war for purely personal ends has always seemed
in the eyes of kings a reasonable action. Frederick the Great admitted
that he started the Seven Years' War by stealing Silesia from Austria
for "glory," and the records of Spain and Austria are full of similar
crimes.
Now that Europe has been shaken from base to summit, will the sober
manhood of the twentieth century allow the present system to endure?
On the other hand, I see a great movement toward giving kingship
a fresh lease of life, toward perpetuating secret diplomacy and
developing clericalism. But men who have stood face to face with the
living God should decide to worship henceforth after the inclination
of their own hearts. Elderly gentlemen of conservative tendencies are
already writing to warn the public that, however awful the chaos now
prevailing, democratic rule would have made it worse. I welcome such
warnings, for they are a proof that the upholders of tradition are at
last aware of the slippery places over which they must so shortly tread.
If the democracy can see the truth, if its eyes refuse to be dazzled
by flags, medals, and uniforms and its ears will convey each plausible
speech to the brain for sober analysis, this war will not have been
waged in vain.
I hold in all seriousness that it is a strife of kings. Gladstone
once asked anybody to tell him how the Austrian Empire had been of
any service to humanity. The aggregation of uncongenial nationalities
has been kept together for the greater glory of the effete house of
Hapsburg, a house whose true history, even since Kaiser Franz Josef
came to the throne, could not be printed. The genius of the German
people, their magnificent education, stern discipline, tireless
industry and full nurseries were conquering both hemispheres, but that
was not sufficient. Unless the German could pay tribute to the house of
Hohenzollern and increase the Imperial prestige, progress was an egg
without salt to the palate of the Potsdam hierarchy.
The fruits of forty years of labour and a generation of child-bearing
were flung into the scale that the Hohenzollerns might stand more
directly in the limelight.
The people whose blood was to be spilt, whose wives were to be widowed,
whose wealth was to be squandered, were wilfully deceived and were
driven to war as the Pharaohs drove their warrior-slaves.
Their awakening must come, and with it let us hope a further accession
of strength to the Social Democracy that is the best hope of Germany.
We know that neither England nor France desired war, that Russia,
whatever her interest in the great Slav-Teuton controversy, was not
ready for it, and the worst to be said of the Allied Powers is that,
conscious of an enormous menace, they united to destroy it. But every
thinking man knows that without the ambitions of a few soldiers,
statesmen (so-called), and officials this war had never come about.
I have often compared the position of republics with that of
monarchies and have cited the American Republics. The United States
live in peace, even the South American States, with their mixed
population, their Spanish, Portuguese, German and Italian blood, are
seldom found long at strife.
Royalists have spoken to me glibly about the corruption that is said
to be inherent in republics. It is about the only charge they can
formulate, and the reply is obvious. In republics corruption is hard
to hide, it comes to the surface and is visible to all. In monarchies
corruption, no less rife, is hard to expose; all the avenues to light
and free speech are closed.
Your republic brings character and brains to the top; your monarchy
makes statesmen of courtiers and sycophants, men who will bow the knee
to the Baal of the hour.
A republic is open to the air of heaven. A monarchy is a garden
enclosed, richer in rank weeds than flowers. If Germany had been a
republic, the Social Democrats could have learned the truth and acted
upon it; had Austria been a republic, giving equal voice to all the
interests it affects to represent, sympathy with the Slavs would have
kept the rulers from their disastrous attempt to reduce Serbia to the
status of a vassal kingdom.
Kings have served their time. The ruler who rode to war at the head of
his troops, who could handle the heaviest sword or battle-axe, who was
both the ruler and judge of his people, belongs to a bygone era. His
last _raison d'être_ passed with the era of industry and rapid transit.
He became an anachronism when people began to realise that life is a
gift to be wisely used, and that racial antagonisms may be cured or
dispersed by close relationship. It is for kings and for kings alone
that millions of men who have no real quarrel have slaughtered one
another under conditions of horror that make description inadequate.
Until we understand that simple truth that the natural inclination
of civilised man is to live on friendly terms with his neighbour in
spite of all divisions of boundaries, whether of place, blood, or
religion, civilisation will be rendered null. Kings have ceased to
represent their people; the time has come when the people can represent
themselves.
Unhappily they do not yet recognise their own power, and nothing is
farther from the wishes of Europe's tottering dynasties than that they
should do so. Education, their first aid to emancipation, has been
grudgingly conceded. Representation is in its infancy and is hedged
round with so many safeguards to royalty that in many countries it is
still struggling for effective existence. For all our brave talk Europe
is still in its first youth, but the tragedy through which we are
passing may yet serve to stimulate its growth as surely as the blood
shed on its fields will yield return in the fruits of the earth.
Will democracy rise from the conflict not only strong but determined?
Will it carry destruction to the source of destruction? Will it assert
its inalienable right to the fruits of peace, progress, and utility?
I pray that it may, but I do not disguise from myself the enormous
difficulty of the task. Demos is yet so unskilled, so easily flattered,
so readily deceived, he will be met by men who have all the traditions
of humbug at their finger tips; indeed, these traditions are almost
their sole inheritance and equipment.
Yet, "all that a man hath will he give for his life," and the democrat
will not only be fighting for his own but for his children's lives and
for the well being of the human race. He will have faced death, and
will have realised that though man may die but once, the condition
of rule that makes war possible makes the doom recurrent with every
generation. He should know that the old traditions of rule are in the
melting pot, and though all the forces of reaction will labour to shape
them again as of old, it is in his power, if it is in his will, to
frustrate their action.
The United States looks to have a voice in the making of peace.
Doubtless it will do useful work, but I cannot conceive of any better
task for the great republicans of to-day than to give the western
world the lead that may help it most of all. Most of them have seen
monarchies at their best and worst; all of them are patriots; they
know what republicanism has done for their own fair land. Will they
stand silent now while the western world is faced by the danger of the
perpetuation of a _régime_ that has little or nothing to justify it?
If they do, they have missed the finest possible chance of spreading
the light that shone upon them when the Declaration of Independence was
signed one hundred and forty years ago.
With the end of the war, if it does not result in the hegemony of
Germany, in which case liberty will be no more than a name, all manner
of schemes for the regeneration of Europe will be afoot. Few, if any,
will go to the root of the evils that have devastated Belgium, Poland,
and a part of France. It is safe to say that the disposition to bring
about sweeping reforms will not find ready expression. We are all too
close to events over here, the blessing of a clear, serene outlook is
denied us. The United States has stood far above the turmoil, it has
seen more of the truth than has been visible to any combatant nation,
it can survey the whole situation sanely.
It seems to me in these circumstances that the greatest republic of
the world has a serious duty, a grave responsibility. It has thriven
on a gigantic scale without patronage or privileged classes, without
titles, without such honours as are merely honours in name. Freed by
the Atlantic from the domination of Europe, it has grown in power and
given its citizens a life removed from the worst anxieties that beset
the Continent. It knows what kingship in its absolute aspect has cost
Europe, and it embraces within its wide domain the children of every
European nation; they dwell side by side in peace and amity. The
freedom enjoyed by the republic would not be bartered for the wealth
of the world, for that freedom is the secret of its eternal youth, its
boundless energy, its untrammelled progress.
There are men in the States to-day, men I am proud to number among my
friends, who might speak in due season the words that would encourage
Europe in the only fight that can rightly engage all nations, the
fight against the curse of kingship. We who know how much this fight
is needed, who have seen in the great republic how it welds together
the most diverse faiths and nationalities, believe that nothing but
kingship divides man from man in Europe and fills every frontier line
with the instruments of death.
All the sympathy of the best elements in the United States is with
suffering Europe to-day, but it cannot be expressed without the use of
words that will sound harsh to some, impertinent to others, startling
to all. Yet these words will not fall upon deaf ears. They will bring
hope to many for whom the future is utterly dark, who believe that the
forces of reaction will strive desperately to overcome democracy and
that democracy needs prompt help if it is to survive.
Granting that America has the right to be heard when the time comes for
the re-establishment of peace, she has the right to deliver the message
of her own hundred years of freedom. Is it too much to hope that she
will rise to the height of this supreme occasion?
If she will not shrink from this duty, she will ensure a victory
beside which the ultimate conquest in this war will appear well-nigh
insignificant.
X
WOMAN'S WAR WORK ON THE LAND
The cry for woman's service on the land is one I endeavoured nearly
twenty years ago to anticipate. It was at a time when the anxiety of
girls to earn their own living was making itself manifest in every
class, and when the wages paid to those who had broken away from the
conventions of purely domestic life were miserably inadequate. I had
heard how, in the Dominions overseas, English women had been forced to
learn open-air duties as best they could, I had realised the natural
instinct of many women for gardening, and I had no doubt that there
would be some whose courage would not flinch from an experiment.
Looking back to that season, I marvel at the progress feminism has
wrought in the world. Then every development that was sought for men
was in the case of woman taboo. The only thing that a girl might do
in the garden without defying the conventions was the light job that
could be accomplished without any fatigue. She might pluck roses; I
have grave doubts as to whether she might plant or prune them. She
might eat celery, but the digging of a trench or the earthing-up of
the plants would have been considered a most "unladylike" occupation.
In fact, we suffered, as a sex, under the spell of that horrible word;
life for women has not been nearly so futile since it was abolished.
In the years when I began first to find that the urgency of social
problems was a bar to the further serenity of life, I, like other
inexperienced people with reform at their hearts, dreamed dreams and
saw visions. I had seen at Easton and Warwick the women of the working
classes enjoying the hard work of the garden and the fields; I, too,
had tried my hand, always to find that I was rewarded with a quickly
renewed sense of the joy of life. Even when weather conditions were
unfavourable, the rest after labour was in itself atonement for the
toil--it was so unlike other rest. Then I began to see an England in
which girls and young women, ceasing to be merely "ladylike," would be
healthier, happier, and more useful than they had been in the years of
which I could take count. I could not help realising that the desire
for active physical exercise could not be limited to one sex, save in
obedience to a convention that ignored human needs. It seemed to me as
though the truth would be apparent to everybody, that nobody who could
lend a helping hand would withhold it. Naturally I was soon undeceived.
I was assured that only the children of working farmers and labourers
could possibly milk the dairy herd, that gardening work in many of
its aspects would be beyond the limits of the capacity of the gently
nurtured. The girl market gardener was voted an impossibility; as
landscape gardener, I was assured, she could never compete with a
man. Poultry-farming and stock-breeding were even voted indelicate!
Household management, to enable girls to take posts as housekeepers in
public institutions or large private houses, was regarded as something
to be acquired without training, and even the commercial side of farm
management was vetoed as a study for girls, as though a well-managed
farm would be the worse for a competent book-keeper because that
book-keeper chanced to be a daughter instead of a son of the house. I
could prolong the list of vetoes and taboos that were presented to me,
but no useful service would be served in doing so. I am only concerned
to remember now--after nearly twenty years--that I was regarded as an
unpractical dreamer, and that, as I write, there are letters on my desk
asking me if I cannot recommend lady gardeners and agriculturists of
all descriptions. I cannot: they are all fully occupied. Many are at
work in England, not a few are busy thousands of miles oversea--in
Canada, Australia, and the United States. Think of the freedom and the
fullness of their lives, never a taboo to stand between them and any
sane development!
To-day I see a great expansion of woman's labours under the sun. The
trouble is that the demand outstrips the supply. The public, whose
apathy has given only a minimum of stimulus to the progress of the girl
agriculturist, has become suddenly clamant. It demands the impossible.
The girls' agricultural colleges are to improvise the highly trained,
skilled article. It is as though they should demand the finished
fruits of the orchard before the budding and flowering time of the
trees has been fulfilled. I am hoping that this will not lead to a
reaction, and that those whose demand for ready-made service brings
inevitably unsatisfactory results will not regard woman's work in the
light that their own thoughtlessness must shed upon it. Only those
of us who understand the curriculum, and the time required to follow
it to the appointed end, know that you must be thorough if you would
be successful. All the ordinary problems of the open-air life must
be faced in training before they can be overcome in the practice of
daily life in farm and garden. To us this is a commonplace; to those
who do not know the land and its labor it comes as a surprise and an
annoyance.
I established the Hostel at Reading, near the great Agricultural
College, in the year 1898, and it remained there for nearly four years,
when the Reading premises began to prove inadequate to the purposes
I had in view. Even when the ridicule ceased, the girls had not been
popular at Reading, where the college students thought that they
were intruders if they ventured beyond the dairy. There were certain
advantages. For example, the heads of the house of Sutton opened their
gardens at stated times, and the girls could see the most skilled
work in operation. But I could not help thinking that, if the idea
was to grow, it must have room and a congenial atmosphere for its
development, and so it happened that the change was made. We moved
to Studley Castle, in Warwickshire, sixteen miles from Birmingham, a
rather modern place, with forty acres of gardens and pleasure grounds,
wonderful out-buildings--built originally for racing stables--and
nearly two hundred and fifty acres of farm land, with woodlands and
water in addition. In many respects this was the ideal place for the
work in hand. There are other institutions of similar kind in England
to-day, and I am not claiming any special superiority for Studley. If I
write of what is done there, it is merely because I know exactly what
work is being carried on, and the full measure of success that attends
it. Studley is now run by a limited liability company, in which I
have no interest whatever. It differs from other agricultural colleges
chiefly in the atmosphere, which is that of Girton or Newnham, and is
deliberately preserved on grounds of economic policy.
If our victory in the world-war is to have in it the elements of
permanence, it can only be by the thorough equipment of those who go
out into the world to contend with the most highly trained nation under
the sun, and, as far as woman's education is concerned, in whatever
aspect, it has the advantage denied to the education of boys--of being
free from old and paralysing conventions. There is nothing that must
be done merely because it has been done from time immemorial, and the
agricultural colleges have been modern from their inception.
The first thing to be considered is so to train the students that they
are able gradually to develop a measure of physical strength, and at
the same time to teach them how to obtain a maximum of result from a
minimum of effort. Many an untrained man could only accomplish with
great exertion what a trained woman can do without difficulty. In a
little while not only do the spade and the wheelbarrow lose all their
terrors, but the comparatively light modern plough can be handled, even
on fairly heavy land, without excessive fatigue. Then the balance must
be preserved between practice and theory. You will remember that the
method of combining the two is not new. Mr. Wackford Squeers taught it
at Dotheboys Hall. "W-I-N-D-E-R, a casement. Now go and clean them."
Perhaps this was the germ of the idea--who knows? The lecturer in the
college is supplemented by the expert in the field, dairy, and garden,
and the student is not limited to the grounds of the institution, ample
though they be. On outlying farms, in private gardens, market gardens,
at country flower shows and exhibitions, the pupils of this and other
colleges are expected to demonstrate their efficiency, thereby learning
how the familiar problems may vary in their incidents and application.
There is no element of secrecy. All that is taught and all that is
learned is open to the inspection of the section of the public that
is interested. The college has terms similar to those of school and
university--thirty-nine weeks of work and thirteen of holiday--and
while girls are admitted as soon as their school education is finished,
at the age of sixteen or thereabouts, women can join at any age. If
they have the energy and determination, they are never too late to
learn. For school-girls over twelve years of age who intend to take
up agricultural or garden work when school days are over, there are
holiday classes at which the 'prentice work may be studied under the
most pleasant conditions possible. Most of the school-girls who take
this course regard it as an ideal holiday.
For the benefit of adults who desire a special study, short courses
can be arranged at all times, but it is, of course, well understood
that such courses do not make the student truly representative of the
college tuition. It has long been recognised that you cannot make
agriculturists or horticulturists in a hurry. The minimum period of
complete study is two years, but the complete course that turns out
the finished student is a full three years. It is in view of this hard
truth that I have eyed askance the suggestion that a course that is
to be practical can be crowded into three months. Such a term would
hardly avail a genius. As far as I have been able to see, the not
very considerable percentage of failures associated with agricultural
colleges is due to the inability of students to distinguish between
enthusiasm and staying power. They have not realised that work must
be done at every season and in nearly all weather, that the sun is
not always shining, and that the novelty of association with Nature
will wear away from all who are not Nature-lovers at heart and by
instinct. That is why I am afraid of short-term training. Two or three
years develop not only aptitude, but character; enthusiasms have time
to take a fresh and long lease of life. Training brings confidence
too. Girls who wish to be gardeners, agriculturists, poultry-farmers,
estate managers, and the rest, will do well to remember that the new
or the modern methods they are taught in an up-to-date institution
are not necessarily followed in the place where they get their first
engagement. If they have to control men, they must expect to find a
certain intolerance of change, a certain resentment of direction.
Unless they are thoroughly sure of themselves they cannot supervise the
work of others.
What the student has to remember is that most of the methods she will
find outside her training college are wasteful, obsolete, or second
rate. Scientific training is unknown to the average gardener, market
gardener, dairy-farmer, and poultry-keeper. Our old countryside is
run on amasingly inept lines. Foolishness of any kind that has behind
it the sanction of a single generation is sacrosanct. If a father has
farmed or gardened foolishly, that special manner of foolishness is
sacred to his son. We have always relied upon "the foreigner." He sends
us fruit, eggs, honey, vegetables, corn, cattle food; while the seas
are open, we need never go hungry. I do not pretend that we can do
without him for everything, but we can certainly do very much more in
the future than we have done in the past, and we have been warned by
our Government to do it. That is why I have so much hope for the future
of the woman on the land. I feel that her work is no longer concerned
with hobbies and private profit; henceforward it is, in effect, a kind
of public service. The Government is avowedly anxious for the future of
the land, frankly concerned to check the annual outlay of millions of
pounds for foodstuffs that we are well able to raise at home.