ORGANIZATION AND ITS PITFALLS
There are people who declare that the winning of this war depends on
organization alone. That is palpably untrue. Good organization can do
much. The greatest thing in all organizations is the living flame that
makes grouping real--the selfless spirit of service that the fighting
man possesses and that is beyond all words of praise.
Talk to a soldier or a sailor, realize how he thinks and
feels about his ship, his battalion, his aircorps. He is
subordinated--selfless--disciplined. The secret of the good soldiers'
achievements and his greatness is selfless service and in our national
organizations behind him that same spirit is the one great thing that
counts.
If you have that as a foundation among your workers, organization is
easy.
We found, at the beginning of the war, a great tendency among women to
rush into direct war work. Masses of women wanted to leave work they
knew everything about to go and do work they knew nothing about.
One thing we have realized, that the trained and educated woman is
invaluable, that the best service you can render your country is to do
the work you know best and are trained for, if it is, as it frequently
is, important civic work. Another point, no younger woman should stop
her education or training--it is the greatest mistake possible. The
war is not over and even when it is, the great task of reconstruction
lies ahead and we want every trained woman we can get for that. Our
women are in Universities and Colleges in greater numbers than ever,
and more opportunities for education, in Medicine in particular have
been opened to them.
The trained woman makes the best worker in practically every
department and is particularly useful in organizing. A scheme that
is only indifferently good but, so far as it goes, is on right lines,
well organized and directed, will be more valuable and get far better
results than a perfect scheme badly organized and run. An organization
or a committee that has a woman as Chairman, President or Secretary,
who insists on running everything and deciding everything for herself,
is bound for disaster.
I should certainly place the will and ability to delegate authority
high up in the qualifications a good organizer must possess.
We cannot afford to have little petty jealousies, social, local, and
individual, on war committees or any other for that matter, but in
this big struggle, they are particularly petty and unworthy.
We have all met frequently the kind of person who tells you, "This
village will never work with that village," or "Mrs. This will never
work with Mrs. That. They never do"; and I always answer, "Isn't it
time they learned to, when their boys die in the trenches together,
why shouldn't they work together," and they always do when it is put
to them.
There is no difficulty in getting women to work together in our
country. We have a link in our Roll of Honor that is more unifying
than any words or arguments or appeals can be. Our women of every rank
of life are closely drawn together.
The appeal to women is to organize for National Service and to realize
that work of national importance is likely not to be at all important
work.
The women in important places in all our countries will be few in
proportion, but the struggle will be won in the Nation, as in the
Army, by the army of the myriads of faithful workers faithfully
performing tasks of drudgery and quiet service--and a realization of
this is the greatest need.
Sticking to the work is of supreme importance. We do not want people
who take up something with great enthusiasm and drop it in a few
months. Nothing is achieved by that.
The good organizer sees her workers do not "grow weary in well doing."
Another important work in organization is to prevent waste of
material, effort and money, by co-ordination whenever possible,
though I should say, as a broad principle, co-ordination should not
be carried to the point of merging together kinds of work that make
a different appeal for work and money and require different treatment
and knowledge and powers. The best results are reached by securing
concentration of appeal and organization on one big issue and getting
the work done by a group directly and keenly interested in the one big
thing and with enthusiasm for it and knowledge of it.
In the personnel of committees and their composition our women have
made it a definite policy to secure the appointment of women to all
Government and National Committees on which our presence would be
useful and on which we ought to be represented and we always prefer
committees of men and women together, unless it be for anything that
is distinctly better served by women's committees.
There is one pitfall in organization into which women fall more
readily than men in my experience. Our instinct as women is to want
to make everything perfect. We instinctively run to detail and to a
desire for absolute accuracy and perfection.
This is invaluable in many ways, but in organizing on a big scale
may be a serious fault. There must, of course, be method, order
and accuracy, but the great essential to secure in big things is
harmonious working--not to insist on a rigid sameness but to allow for
widely divergent views and attitudes and ways of doing things so long
as the essential rules are observed. We should not insist too much
on identity in the way of work of different places and districts.
In essentials--unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things,
charity--that might well be the wise organizer's motto.
The supplementing of governmental organization by national voluntary
organization is a great piece of work and in the beginning of the war,
and still, many of our organizations, voluntary or semi-official in
character, were of great service. The work of the Soldiers and Sailors
Families' Association is an example. The S. and S.F.A. had been
created in the South African War and in peace time and war time looked
after the dependants of the soldier and sailor. Its committees were
composed of men and women--and it administered voluntary funds and
later grants from the National Relief Fund, raised at the outbreak of
war.
When war broke out, all the Reservists were called up and our men
volunteered in tens of thousands. The pay offices of the army, being
small like everything else in our army, could not cope quickly with
the numbers of claims for allowances pouring in, but the S. and S.F.A.
stepped into the breach and looked after the dependants. It secured
vast numbers more of women in every town and village who visited every
dependant and looked after them. They advanced the allowances which
were paid back to them later--and this started in the first week of
the war. They gave additional grants in certain hard cases for rent,
sickness or in event of deaths in family at home. Every home was
visited and no dependant needed to be in distress or want--S. and
S.F.A. offices existed in every town and representatives in every
village and any difficulty or trouble could be brought to them. The
whole of this work is done voluntarily. In some cases workrooms were
started from which sewing and knitting for soldiers and sailors were
given to the dependents and paid for. It was not only the money and
practical help that was of great service--the S. and S.F.A. visitor to
the soldier's wife and mother brought sympathy and help and interest.
Another movement for soldiers and sailors dependents was the founding
of clubs for them in many towns. One hundred and thirty-five of these
clubs are linked up now in the United Services Clubs League. They are
bright, cheery rooms in which the women can find newspapers, books,
music, amusement, and opportunity to sew or knit comforts, can meet
their friends and talk.
The Royal Patriotic Fund was another semi-official organization which
was run voluntarily, gave grants at death of soldier or sailor and
administered pensions. It is now entirely merged in the Naval and
Military War Pensions Statutory Committee and local committees set
up in January, 1916, which administer all grants, pensions, wound
gratuities, etc., and looks after dependants.
Women sit on the Statutory Committee and there must be women members
on every County, Borough and City War Pensions Committee in our
country.
The organization of war charities is now in England controlled by the
War Charities Committee appointed by the Government in April, 1916.
The committee controls not only what could be strictly termed War
Charities, but all war agencies of any kind for which appeals for
funds are made to the public. These organizations must be registered
and approved by the committee, and their accounts must be open to
inspection and audit. This was a wise and necessary step, not so much
because of actual fraudulent appeals--there has been practically none
of that, but there was a certain amount of overlapping and of waste of
money, material and energy, and some very few organizations in which
an undue proportion of funds raised was absorbed in expenses. Comforts
for soldiers and prisoners of war parcels are also now co-ordinated
under two national committees.
The first work of registering Belgian refugees and of providing French
and Flemish interpreters was done by a voluntary organization--the
London Society for Women's Suffrage (a branch of N.U.W.S.S.), which
has always been notable for its admirable organization. It provided
150 interpreters for this work in a few days, and work was carried on
at all the London Centres from early morning till midnight. When the
Government took over the charge of Belgian refugees, the system of
registration used by the London Society was adopted without change by
them and the organizer in charge was taken over also and put in a very
responsible position at the War Refugees Committee's Headquarters.
The work of our Government Employment Exchanges (which were
established before the War by the Board of Trade) and are now under
the Ministry of Labour--has been supplemented by various Professional
Women's Bureaus, by the compiling of a Professional Women's Register,
secured through Universities, Colleges, Headmistresses' Association,
etc., and by the setting up of the Women's Service Bureau by the
London Society for Women Suffrage (N.U.W.S.S.). Various women's
organizations have established most valuable clearing houses for
voluntary workers in Scotland and England and Wales. The Women's
Service Bureau has dealt with 40,000 applications for voluntary and
paid work--mostly paid. Its interviewers take the greatest trouble to
place these applicants suitably, and to find out just what they can do
or would be good at doing.
Our biggest Government arsenal secured their first munition
supervisors through it--and the Government Departments, big firms,
factories, organizations, banks, workshops, institutions of any kind,
send to it for workers.
It not only finds these posts without charge--it is supported entirely
by voluntary contribution--but it has a loan and grant fund to enable
women and girls without money to pay for training and maintenance.
Its records and the letters in its flies provide reading that is
as absorbing as any novel, and it was one of the wise agencies that
realized the older woman had a place and could help as well as the
younger ones.
To find the person and the post and to put them together is its
fascinating and admirably done task.
The organization done by women in Britain has been notable and
admirable.
I can only touch on some of it and must leave out much, but it is
worth while noting that there has been very little overlapping in the
work. The total percentage of overlapping was estimated by the War
Charities Committee on their investigation at 10 per cent and of that
only a very small amount was due to women.
WOMEN HAVE SERVED OR ARE SERVING ON THE FOLLOWING GOVERNMENT
COMMITTEES.
Belgian Refugees' Committee. 1914.
Clerical and Commercial Occupation Committee, do (Scotland.) 1915.
Disabled Officers and Men.
Education After the War. April, 1916.
Educational Reform. (August, 1916.)
Food, Committee of Inquiry Into High Cost of--June, 1916.
Advisory Committee on Women in Industry. March, 1916.
Labor Commission to Deal with Industrial Unrest. (Ministry of Labor.)
June, 1917.
Munitions Central Labor Supply Committee.
Munitions, Arbitration Tribunals.
Munitions, Committee on the Supply and Organization of Women's Service
in Canteens, Hostels, Clubs, etc. December, 1916.
Naval and Military War Pensions Statutory Committee. January, 1916.
Nurses, Supply of--October, 1916.
Polish Victims' Relief Fund.
Prevention and Relief of Distress. 1914.
Professional Classes Sub-Committee.
Prisoners of War Help Committee.
Reconstruction Committee. (To advise the Government on the many
national problems which will arise at the end of the war.) 1916.
Shops: Committee of Inquiry, to Consider Conditions of Retail Trade to
Secure the Enlistment of Men. (November, 1915.)
Teachers' Salaries. Departmental Committee of Enquiry. June, 1917.
War Charities. April, 1916.
National War Savings Committee. April, 1916.
COMMITTEES EXCLUSIVELY COMPOSED OF WOMEN.
Committee, Report on Joint Standing Industrial Councils. 1917.
Women's Wages Committee. 1917.
Central Committee on Women's Employment. 1914.
Drinking Among Women, Committee of Enquiry. November, 1915.
There are also two women on the--
Executive Committee of National Relief Fund.
Ministry of Food has two women Co-Directors--
Mrs. C.S. Peel
Mrs. Pember Reeves
HOSPITALS--RED CROSS--V.A.D.
"Come, ye blessed of my Father;
I was sick and ye visited me."
--MATT., Chap. 25.
"A lady with a lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land,
A noble type of good
Heroic womanhood."
--H.W. LONGFELLOW, "To Florence Nightingale."