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Page 45
A few days ago, I accompanied a woman official distributing some leaflets
on behalf of a Government department, in some visits to families living in
a block of model dwellings somewhere in South London. We called on nine
families. In every single case the man of the family had gone, or was
expecting to go, to the war; except in one case, where a man who, out of
pure patriotism and at great personal difficulty had joined the Volunteer
Reserve at the outbreak of war, had strained his heart in trench-digging
and was now medically unfit, to his own bitter disappointment. There was
some grumbling in the case of one young wife that her husband should be
forced to go before the single men whom she knew; but in the main the
temper that showed itself bore witness both to the feeling and the
intelligence that our people are bringing to bear on the war. One woman
said her husband was a sergeant in a well-known regiment. He thought the
world of his men, and whenever one was killed, he must be at the burying.
"He can't bear, you know"--she added shyly--"they should feel alone." She
had three brothers-in-law "out"--one recently killed. One was an ambulance
driver under the R.A.M.C. He had five small children, but had volunteered.
"He doesn't say much about the war, except that 'Tommies are wonderful.
They never complain.'" She notices a change in his character. He was
always good to his wife and children--"but now he's splendid!" The brother
of another woman had been a jockey in Belgium, had liked the country and
the people. When war broke out he "felt he must fight for them." He came
home at once and enlisted. Another brother had been a stoker on a war-ship
at the Dardanelles, and was in the famous landing of April 25. Bullets
"thick and fast like hailstorm. Terrible times collecting the dead! Her
brother had worked hard forming burial parties. Was now probably going to
the Tigris. Wrote jolly letters!"
Then there was the little woman born and bred in the Army, with all the
pride of the Army--a familiar type. Husband a sergeant in the Guards--was
gymnastic instructor at a northern town--and need not have gone to the
war, but felt "as a professional soldier" he ought to go. Three brothers
in the Army--one a little drummer-boy of sixteen, badly wounded in the
retreat from Mons. Her sailor brother had died--probably from exposure, in
the North Sea. The most cheerful, plucky little creature! "We are Army
people, and must expect to fight."
Well--you say you "would like America to visualise the effort, the
self-sacrifice of the English men and women who are determined to see this
war through." There was, I thought, a surprising amount of cheerful
effort, of _understanding_ self-sacrifice in those nine homes, where my
companion's friendly talk drew out the family facts without difficulty.
And I am convinced that if I had spent days instead of hours in following
her through the remaining tenements in these huge and populous blocks the
result would have been practically the same. _The nation is behind the
war, and behind the Government_--solidly determined to win this war, and
build a new world after it.
As to the work of our women, I have described something of it in the
munitions area, and if this letter were not already too long, I should
like to dwell on much else--the army of maidens, who, as V.A.D.'s (members
of Voluntary Aid Detachments), trained by the Red Cross, have come
trooping from England's most luxurious or comfortable homes, and are
doing invaluable work in hundreds of hospitals; to begin with, the most
menial scrubbing and dish-washing, and by now the more ambitious and
honourable--but not more indispensable--tasks of nursing itself. In this
second year of the war, the first army of V.A.D.'s, now promoted, has
everywhere been succeeded by a fresh levy, aglow with the same eagerness
and the same devotion as the first. Or I could dwell on the women's
hospitals--especially the remarkable hospital in Endell Street, entirely
officered by women; where some hundreds of male patients accept the
surgical and medical care of women doctors, and adapt themselves to the
light and easy discipline maintained by the women of the staff, with
entire confidence and grateful good-will. To see a woman dentist at work
on a soldier's mouth, and a woman quartermaster presiding over her stores,
and managing, besides, everything pertaining to the lighting, heating, and
draining of the hospital, is one more sign of these changed and changing
times. The work done by the Scottish Women's Hospital in Serbia will rank
as one of the noblest among the minor episodes of the war. The magnificent
work of British nurses, everywhere, I have already spoken of. And
everywhere, too, among the camps in England and abroad, behind the
fighting lines, or at the great railway-stations here or in France,
through which the troops pass backwards and forwards, hundreds of women
have been doing ardent yet disciplined service--giving long hours in
crowded canteens or Y.M.C.A. huts to just those small kindly offices,
which bring home to the British soldier, more effectively than many things
more ambitious, what the British nation feels towards him. The war has put
an end, so far as the richer class is concerned, to the busy idleness and
all the costly make-believes of peace. No one gives "dinner-parties" in
the old sense any more; the very word "reception" is dying out. The high
wages that munition-work has brought to the women of the working class,
show themselves, no doubt, in some foolish dressing. "You should see the
hats round here on a Saturday!" said the Manager of a Midland factory. But
I am bound to say he spoke of it proudly. The hats were for him a
testimony to the wages paid by his firm; and he would probably have
argued, on the girls' part, that after the long hours and hard work of the
week, the hats were a perfectly legitimate "fling," and human nature must
out. Certainly the children of the workers are better fed and better
clothed, which speaks so far well for the mothers; and recent Government
inquiries seem to show that in spite of universal employment, and high
wages, the drunkenness of the United Kingdom as a whole is markedly less,
while at the same time--uncomfortable paradox!--the amount of alcohol
consumed is greater. One hears stories of extravagance among those who
have been making "war-profits," but they are less common this year than
last; and as to my own experience, all my friends are wearing their old
clothes, and the West End dressmakers, poor things, in view of a large
section of the public which regards it as a crime "to buy anything new"
are either shutting down till better days, or doing a greatly restricted
business. Taxation has grown much heavier, and will be more and more
severely felt. Yet very few grumble, and there is a general and determined
cutting down of the trappings and appendages of life, which is to the good
of us all.
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