When in August, 1914, the most dreadful disaster that ever befell
humanity burst upon the European nations, women at first stood paralyzed
with fear and terror, foreseeing the tremendous burden and sacrifices
they would have to bear. But after every hope for a peaceful solution
had vanished and nothing remained but to face the inevitable, they
rallied and prepared to weather the coming hurricane.
The manner in which they met it during the long and terrible years of
1914, 1915, 1916, 1917 and 1918 was perhaps the greatest revelation the
world has ever experienced. Never before have members of the “weaker
sex” braved such a catastrophe more heroically and made such supreme
sacrifices. In fact, woman’s activity during the World War has been a
grand manifestation, which stands out in glorious colors from a black
background of man’s hatred, revengefulness, slander, calumniation,
treason, avarice, atrocities, and murder.
When the vast armies were mobilized it became necessary to close the
innumerable gaps caused by the sudden drafting and departure of so many
million men. To refill the positions they had occupied, was the most
urgent necessity, as otherwise the whole machinery of national life
would become disorganized, and that at the most critical time.
At once immense numbers of women and girls responded to the call. They
went into the tramway and railway service to act as ticket sellers and
punchers, as conductors, brakemen and motormen. They replaced the letter
carriers and chauffeurs; they climbed the lofty seats formerly occupied
by cab-drivers and postilions. Mounting motor-cycles they delivered
telegrams and performed other urgent errands. They formed
street-cleaning and fire-brigades and took care of the sanitation and
protection of the cities. In the offices and stores they assumed the
duties of the bookkeeper and floor-walker; in the schools they
substituted for male teachers who had followed the call of the war
trumpet. They repaired telegraph-wires and installed telephones; they
became blacksmiths and repaired the roofs of houses. They cleaned
windows and chimneys, delivered newspapers and carried the coal from the
wagon into the bins and bunkers. They acted as “ice-men” and collected
the garbage and ashes. They tilled the fields and vegetable gardens, and
brought in the crops and the harvests. They thrashed the wheat and
served in the mills as well as in the bakeries. They furnished clothes,
and made and mended shoes. They finished the public roads and other
works that had been left uncompleted. They built houses and tore down
others. In Berlin the excavation for a new underground railway, badly
needed, was done by women, and half of the gangs that worked on the
railroad tracks were made up of girls.
[Illustration:
WOMEN FILLING SHELLS IN A BRITISH AMMUNITION FACTORY.
]
In England as well as in France and Germany thousands of women could be
seen in the ship-yards working side by side with men on the scaffolds,
at bolting and riveting, forging and casting, as if they had always done
this work. In fact, women did everything that heretofore had been
regarded as “man’s work.”
But they did much more. Hundreds of thousands of women entered the gun-
and ammunition factories in order that the armies might not lack ample
means for the defense of the country.
[Illustration:
WOMEN IN A SHELL FACTORY.
]
Donning overalls, oil-cloth caps and gas masks they became engaged in
the hazardous manufacture of high explosives, of filling and packing the
deadly gas-shells and other projectiles. At the same time millions of
busy hands prepared the bandages and other necessities for the treatment
of the wounded. Whole brigades of Red Cross nurses were formed and went
to the battlefields and hospitals, to attend those who in the grim
conflict might lose their limbs, their eye-sight, or become sufferers
from the effect of poisonous gases.
All too soon long trains and hospital-ships brought in such
unfortunates, at first a few hundred, then in ever increasing numbers,
by the thousands and by tens of thousands. Within a few months most of
the countries engaged in the dreadful struggle were turned into immense
hospitals, filled with moaning and suffering. What noble and
indefatigable women did here to alleviate this misery and distress, can
never be fully told and will never be forgotten. Whoever was witness of
the self-control and perseverance shown year after year by many Red
Cross nurses will always think of them with reverence.
There is not a single Army Medical Corps of the many nations engaged in
the World War, which does not freely admit, that the immense amount of
work could not have been done without the help of women. In a tribute to
the Red Cross Major-General Merritte W. Ireland, Surgeon-General U. S.
Army, said:
“Probably the greatest single service rendered by the Red Cross home
forces was the supply of trained nurses it furnished our hospitals. The
Army Medical Corps trains a few nurses, but could never hope to turn out
the large number provided through Miss Delano’s department. If we needed
a thousand nurses for a given work, we telegraphed the War Department.
The War Department notified Miss Delano. And the nurses arrived on
schedule.
“An especially notable service rendered by Red Cross nurses occurred
during the early American campaign when our men were brigaded with
French divisions. When wounded, they were, of course, taken to French
hospitals. Unable to answer questions or tell their needs, they were in
a very unhappy plight. Scores of Red Cross nurses speaking both French
and English were immediately sent to these hospitals—and the problem was
solved.
“The work of the Red Cross was often the theme of discussions at
American General Headquarters at Chaumont. I remember that it was
enlarged upon there in a conversation between General Pershing, Mr. H.
P. Davison, the Chairman of the War Council of the American Red Cross,
and myself. We were speaking of the value of the service rendered by the
millions of our women and how they helped keep the influence of home
about the boys at the front. And General Pershing said: “The women of
the United States deserve a large share of the credit for the success of
the American forces.”
“Our Army officers have often admired not only the spirit but the
efficiency of the American Red Cross organization. It provided an
inexhaustible store of supplies; it possessed a remarkable facility for
adapting itself to any emergency, however unexpected; and its personnel
always evinced the finest readiness for co-operation. The millions of
surgical dressings, knitted articles, refugee garments, and other
supplies it contributed—for these things alone it would have deserved
the Army’s unstinted praise. All the splints used in all our hospitals
in France, both of the Army and of the Red Cross, came from the Red
Cross. It furnished more than a quarter of a billion surgical dressings.
It sent over enough sweaters for every man in our overseas forces to
possess one.”
Similar tributes have been freely extended to the nurses of all other
Red Cross branches, which co-operated with the Medical Corps of the
various powers engaged in the terrible war.
[Illustration:
A GOOD SAMARITAN.
]
While performing their merciful work, many women had to bear the
depressing anxiety caused by husbands, sons, or brothers, fighting in
the trenches or on the ocean; or for those unfortunates who as prisoners
had fallen into the hands of the enemy.
The women of the Central powers had to face many additional problems of
the most perplexing nature. As the soil of Germany and Austria does not
yield enough to support the whole population, and as all imports of
foodstuffs were cut off by hostile fleets, provisions became more scarce
and more expensive from day to day. There was not sufficient milk to
keep the millions of babies alive; and not enough food to save adults
from slow starvation. To stretch the scant supplies the most careful and
rigid methods of administration had to be invented and applied. Public
kitchens were established to reduce the cost of living to the lowest
point possible. In Berlin twenty-three committees of the National
Women’s Service with several thousand voluntary workers were running
such charitable kitchens, from which tens of thousands regularly
received their daily meals. The same organizations later on supervised
the system of bread-, milk-, grocery- and butter-cards, when the
increasing shortage of food forced the governments to the severest
restrictions.
Among the many German relief organizations those of the Red Cross took
the leading place. Originally divided into five main sections under the
general control of a central committee and designed to combat of
sickness and destitution in the civil population, it now was increased
to twenty-three divisions. Their welfare work assumed such importance
during the progress of the war that it had to be subdivided into three
groups, the first of which became engaged in fighting tuberculosis and
contagious diseases, the second in the protection of infancy and
motherhood, the third in family welfare work in the narrower meaning of
the term. In all these branches the organization of the Red Cross
provided the framework within which the numerous national, state and
local social activities of the country grouped themselves naturally in
accordance with their separate functions.
The activity of the organizations during the years 1917, 1918, and 1919,
the dreadful years of general distress and starvation, forms one of the
most pathetic chapters in woman’s history. Not only the food, but the
cotton, wool, leather, rubber, fat, oil, soap, and hundreds of other
necessities gave out completely. People were compelled to live on
substitutes. And as these became too scarce or too expensive, they lived
on substitutes for these substitutes. Imagine the heartrending pain
mothers were bearing when at the end of 1918 and in 1919 large numbers
of mayors of German cities and numerous professors of medicine were
compelled to send urgent appeals for help to all medical faculties of
the world, stating that since the signing of the truce 800,000 people in
Germany had died from starvation. “Many millions of human beings,” one
of the appeals reads, “are living on only half or even less than half
the quantity of food necessary to sustain life. Utterly exhausted they
have lost all power of resistance and succumb to any kind of sickness
that may befall them. The worst sufferers are the children and those
mothers, who fast for the sake of their children. There are too the
neurasthenics of all kinds, the numbers of which have, for four years,
increased immensely. Furthermore, there are the overworked, and those
who have become sick through the unheard-of monotony of food and from
the absolute absence of every stimulant. Their existence becomes more
unbearable from day to day. While the physicians of Germany are
profoundly impressed with the terrible ravages caused by hunger, they
have absolutely no means of combating them.”
* * * * *
While during these dreadful times millions of women devoted themselves
to the noble work of healing the terrible wounds and sufferings, other
groups eagerly tried to bring about a cessation of hostilities.
Immediately after the first declaration of war, the “International Woman
Suffrage Alliance” directed an urgent appeal to the British Foreign
Office as well as to all Foreign Embassies in London, to leave untried
no method of conciliation or arbitration to avert the threatening
disaster. Numerous women’s societies in Holland, Sweden, Germany and
Switzerland arose simultaneously and joined the good cause. Soon a great
movement for peace began to sweep through the women of the entire world.
But women’s efforts to bring the conflict to a standstill lacked as yet
the necessary strength. They were overpowered by the influence and
machinations of those statesmen, financiers, publishers of newspapers
and countless others, who wanted war. And so nothing remained for women
but to repeat ever and again their protests against the madness of men.
When in December, 1914, suffering Christianity prepared to celebrate the
natal day of the Messiah, the Prince of Peace, a noble-minded woman of
London, =Miss Emily Hobhouse=, wrote the following letter:
“To American Women, Friends of Humanity and Peace!
“Friends:—May I appeal to you in the name of Humanity, on behalf of the
children of Europe, before whom suffering or death has already taken
place, and whose future is fraught with pain? In you lies our hope of
help for them, for you are free to speak and act.
“Will you not come to our troubled world, unite with the women of other
neutral lands and initiate a crusade—a real ‘holy’ war, fought with the
swords of the Spirit?
“Appalling as is this massacre of the manhood of Europe, that is not the
worst. As long as men adopt barbaric methods of settling disputes they
must abide by the consequences; but for those innocent victims, the
non-combatants—women, babes, old and sick—I crave your help. Their names
and numbers will never be known. They are multiplying in Poland and
Galicia, in Belgium and France, in East Prussia and Holland, and
elsewhere. Ponder this vast host, voiceless, suffering, dying, crouching
beside their blackened ruins or fleeing from the devastated areas both
east and west. Think of disease let loose, of the horrors of cold and
famine!
“I know it is not easy to visualize details of conditions so foreign to
average experience. It needs a mental effort few can make. It is because
I was daily witness of such things in the South African War that I dare
not be silent. Disease, devastation, starvation and death were words I
then learned as war interprets them. I saw a country burnt and
devastated as large parts of Europe are to-day; I saw old and sick,
women and children turned out of house and home; I saw them, half clad,
starving, lying sick to death upon the bare earth; I saw babies that
were born in open, crowded trucks; I saw haggard, endless sick, gaunt
skeletons, hourly deaths. There in the Boer States death swept away
non-combatants in the proportion of five to one of those who fell in the
field.
“It is because I know the brunt of this war, too, is falling and must
fall, heaviest upon the weak and young, that I appeal now on their
behalf, not merely to those who love peace, but to the great body of
women who love children. Little children, more sensitive to exposure, to
extremes of heat and cold, to tainted food, to starvation, and to the
stench, the poisonous stench of war, quickly fade, quickly die.
“Will you not arise and work for peace?—For peace alone can save the
children. It would be, I well know, a struggle against powers of
darkness and will need the whole armor of God. Yet every sentiment of
pity and of civilization, leave alone Christianity, demands the effort.
The victims cannot help themselves; succor must come from without.
“Relief, we know, you pour most generously, but relief cannot meet a
want so colossal, neither can it touch the worst ills. Cut at the root
of the evil—the war itself. A strong lead is needed. Myriads want peace;
they never wanted war. In each country this is true; constant proofs
reach us from Germany and France, as well as various parts of England.
The press of each nation asserts that the people are unanimous for war.
It is not so, but those who have the means of speaking, and who swim
with their governmental streams, can speak the loudest and alone are
heard. Many dare not, many cannot speak. Others make a truce and save
thousands of human lives and receive the blessings of thousands of wives
and mothers.
“A union of neutral women could investigate the facts of the sufferings
amongst non-combatants, and founded upon acquired personal knowledge
they could in the name of Humanity formulate demands persistent, cogent,
irresistible, not in favor of any one party or nation, but simply for
Peace.
“It seems futile to turn to statesmen, governments or prelates for aid.
They are tied and bound by position, custom and mutual fear. They await
propitious movements. Famine, disease and death do not wait.
“=Women have this advantage: they are still unfettered by custom and
expediency; they need consult only the dictates of humanity. If ever the
world needed their intervention on a vast scale, it needs it now!=
“Failure in such a task would have no fears for them; failure in a noble
effort is often a measure to success! The greatest have seemed to fail.
Judged by human standards, Christ’s life on earth was a failure. =The
effort in any case would leave its mark upon the thought and history of
the world. Womanhood will have arisen in vindication of a higher
humanity—to avenge desolated motherhood and protect martyred children;
it will have asserted its right to shield the weak and young from the
fatal results of the organized murder called war.=”
[Illustration:
MISS JANE ADDAMS.
]
The appeal was not made in vain. The day after its receipt a number of
prominent American women called a convention in Washington, D. C., on
January 10th, 1915. =Miss Jane Addams= of Chicago acted as chairman. The
result of this meeting was the organization of the “=Woman’s Peace
Party=,” which adopted the following
Preamble and Platform.
“We women of the United States, assembled in behalf of World Peace,
grateful for the security of our own country, but sorrowing for the
misery of all involved in the present struggle among warring nations, do
hereby band ourselves together to demand that war be abolished.
“Equally with men pacifists, we understand that planned-for, legalized,
wholesale, human slaughter is to-day the sum of all villainies.
“=As women, we feel a peculiar moral passion of revolt against both the
cruelty and the waste of war. As women, we are especially the custodians
of the life of the ages.= We will not longer consent to its reckless
destruction.
“=As women, we are particularly charged with the future of childhood and
with the care of the helpless and the unfortunate.= We will not longer
endure without protest that added burden of maimed and invalid men and
poverty-stricken widows and orphans which war places upon us.
“=As women, we have builded by the patient drudgery of the past the
basic foundation of the home and of peaceful industry.= We will not
longer accept without a protest, that must be heard and heeded by men,
that hoary evil which in an hour destroys the social structure that
centuries of toil have reared.
“=As women, we are called upon to start each generation onward toward a
better humanity.= We will not longer tolerate without determined
opposition that denial of the sovereignty of reason and justice by which
war and all that makes war to-day render impotent the idealism of the
race.
“Therefore, as human beings and the mother half of humanity, we demand
that our right to be consulted in the settlement of questions concerning
not alone the life of individuals but of nations be recognized and
respected.
“We demand that women be given a share in deciding between war and peace
in all the courts of high debate—within the home, the school, the
church, the industrial order, and the state.
“So protesting, and so demanding, we hereby form ourselves into a
national organization to be called the =Woman’s Peace Party=.
“We hereby adopt the following as our platform of principles, some of
the items of which have been accepted by a majority vote, and more of
which have been the unanimous choice of those attending the conference
that initiated the formation of this organization. We have sunk all
differences of opinion on minor matters and given freedom of expression
to a wide divergence of opinion in the details of our platform and in
our statement of explanation and information, in a common desire to make
our woman’s protest against war and all that makes for war, vocal,
commanding and effective. We welcome to our membership all who are in
substantial sympathy with that fundamental purpose of our organization,
whether or not they can accept in full our detailed statement of
principles.
Platform.
“The Purpose of this Organization is to enlist all American women in
arousing the nations to respect the sacredness of human life and to
abolish war. The following is adopted as our platform:
1. The immediate calling of a convention of neutral nations in the
interest of early peace.
2. Limitation of armaments and the nationalization of their
manufacture.