Part 4

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

It is a commonplace that war brings in its train evils without number, but there are certain ills that are added to the inevitable ones either by greed of gain, indifference to progress or a determination to make profit at the expense of the State. We have in our midst at all times certain people who are concerned only with their own ends, and who regard all the means to those ends as legitimate. War time reduces the measure of restraint that the common sense of the community imposes upon its greedier members. They find and seize their hour when normal conditions are upset. It would be easy to multiply instances, but in writing this paper I am concerned with one only--the employment of children on farms.

To the average man who does not know a swede from a turnip or the difference between sainfoin and clover this is a small matter; to those of us who know the land and its problems, who administer estates large or small, who are morally if not legally responsible for the happiness and well-being of village communities, it is a tragedy.

I can remember hearing my elders talk of the bad old days when the gang system prevailed all over England. The ganger was a contractor of irregular labour. He would enter a district in charge of his wretched company of men, women, and children, and would supply their labour at fixed rates to the farmer who needed it. He charged so much a day for each hand; he saw to it that one and all did their full day's work. They were fed abominably, housed in barns and out-houses, and lived in a promiscuity that would revolt a gipsy. At last even the thick-skinned countryside could endure the abomination no longer, and the "ganger" disappeared. It took years for the Legislature to discover that, apart from the cruelty involved in the custom, it was creating fresh material for gaols and asylums, that children needed education rather than field labour, that the mothers could not combine maternity with hard work in the fields, that if you deprive people of the means of living decently they will revert to the state of savagery.

The agricultural labourer's struggle has not been limited to the land. He has been fighting for years to raise his miserable wage. When I was a girl it was about a shilling a day with "small beer" of the farmer's brewing thrown in. It is about 3_s._ 6_d._ a day now; but against this the price of necessities has gone up between 50 and 100 per cent. Saving is impossible, and even the old age pension that lightens the evening of his long day hardly avails to keep him from the workhouse--unless he has a wife of equal age or children who, out of their tiny means, will render a little assistance. He lives in a cottage that, if often picturesque, is nearly always overcrowded; his food and clothing are of the roughest, and for holidays he has Christmas Day and the wet weather, when he may sit at home--at his own expense--for when there is no work there is no pay. But he lives in hope; and sometimes he goes on strike, to the disgust and indignation of his employer, and his children have been getting a better chance in life than he had. They are supposed to be kept at school until they are fourteen. He was rook scaring at the ripe age of ten for a penny a day.

Rural education is a poor thing enough. Children may have to walk two miles or more, in all weathers, to the village school. Their father cannot afford to buy them good boots or a water-proof coat; it is beyond his means to give them nourishing food, and so help them to fight the diseases of childhood; but he feels that something is being done for them, and, as a rule, he does nothing to make them wage-earners before their time. Now they are taken from school two years before an age that the trade unions hold to be insufficient; they are sent on the land to work for a wage of eighteen pence a day, in any weather, on any soil, without the proper clothing and with insufficient food. There they will undersell the rural labour market, they will be robbed of their childhood, they will go without supervision at a time when they need it most. And the Bumbles of our Education Councils have nodded thick, approving heads.

It is hard to write patiently of such retrograde devices, put forward, as all such proposals are, in the name of the country's needs. If these needs be genuine, which I doubt, if there be no adequate supply of female labour to be obtained for a fair price, why should the children of our poorest, the little ones whose physique has never been strengthened by sufficient nourishing food and by the hygiene of the home, be called upon to bear the burden single-handed? Why should not Eton and Harrow, Rugby, Marlborough, Winchester, and other schools without number, serve the national need? The lads at these expensive establishments can at least complete their education after the war, they can carry health and strength to the fields, they can acquaint themselves at first hand with the realities of labour, a knowledge that, with the changing times ahead, will be valuable to many of them who will inherit land in days to come. Will the farmers who are sending to the fields the half-grown children of their ill-paid labourers contribute their own to work by their side? I am sure that the mere suggestion will rouse the wildest indignation; but all the children, whatever their advantage or disadvantage, are British citizens, and it is not too much to suggest that those who have a stake in the country should at least do as much as those for whom fortune provided no birthright. Let us be democratic in deeds as well as words. I am quite sure that, if the doubtful privilege extended to the rural labourer's children were conferred at the same time upon the children of all patriots, the councils would expunge their fatuous resolutions from their minute books; they would make all possible haste to forget them.

But it may be urged that, in pleading for the children, I have overlooked the crying needs of the countryside, that I am ignorant of the real need for labour to deal with the increased area of the corn and for the late-sown spring crops, for it is clear that, as soon as the proposal for universal child labour is made, the scheme falls to the ground.

I am well aware of the existing conditions--what landlord is not?--and I have a remedy for them. It is not a popular one, but I am not searching for popularity. In spite of the genuine sacrifices that have been made by many classes of the community, much more remains to be done. We have all over the country racing stables full of lads who cannot go to the war and of men who have passed serviceable age. Hard work in the fields from April to the time the last corn is under the stack thatch would do them all the good in the world, and, with some knowledge of all classes of horses, I believe that horses would survive and the superiority of the British sires would not be lost.

Having depleted the racing stables, even at the cost of reducing the number of race meetings, I would turn my attention to the golf clubs: their name is legion. What an army of "ineligible" caddies might be recruited for the fields and given the chance of earning a living intelligently! I go so far as to hint that thousands of the elderly gentlemen who still pursue the golf ball might find more useful occupation in ministering to the country's genuine needs.

Let me pass from one monstrous suggestion to another. I would enroll the gamekeepers and the gillies; for once I would leave the wild pheasants to breed as they will and the grouse to work out their own salvation. A desperate remedy, but then our disease is dangerous. We need corn even more than pheasants, and other game birds can look after themselves. There might be an epidemic of poaching, in which case I would sentence every poacher to three months' hard labour--on the land. We have in this country to-day hundreds, I might say thousands, of sturdy middle-aged men who are now following occupations that, while they are perfectly reasonable in times of peace, are superfluous, even derogatory, to-day.

There is yet another class that can be mobilised to serve the country's need. I would like to see the last remaining footmen and the valets of middle age allowed to enjoy a summer of useful activity. They, too, may be in their right place at normal times; now their country needs them more than their masters do. A little hardship would be involved, but I do not believe there are many employers of superfluous or ornamental labour who would, if the matter were put before them fairly and temperately, place their own petty comforts before the country's need for food. We hope and believe that we may rely upon our Fleet to feed us, but why should we run risks? No war is won until it is lost, and if by ill-fortune we experienced a shortage, I do not think that the owners of racing stables, the renters of shooting and fishing, the members of golf clubs and the employers of men servants could acquit themselves of a serious responsibility. If all these sources of supply are tapped, and it is still found that the supply of labour in the fields is inadequate to the nation's needs, let us proclaim a national holiday in all the schools of the country, and let the high and the low born, the rich and the poor, seek the fields together. But until all sources of adult labour have been exhausted let us spare the little ones, and in any case let us see that those whose share of the good things of life is smallest are not called upon to endure trials and make sacrifices that we would shrink from demanding of our own children.

VIII

COMRADES

In times when national emotion is deeply stirred it is possible for the close observer to get a glimpse of the main trend of thought. Just as a feather will show the direction of the wind, a word may show the direction of a man's mind. It is on this account that I was deeply moved and greatly stimulated of late by hearing that as the gallant Frenchmen attack the enemy their rallying cry is "Camarades, Camarades!" This is one of the most beautiful words in any language, it is the one by which a nation may rise to the height of its greatest achievement, whether in clearing its beloved land of a hated enemy or clearing its administration of the abuses from which no administration is free. One hardly dares to think of what the world might be like to-day if war had not been needed to establish the wonderful unity the word bespeaks.

There is not on all the earth a more democratic army than that of France, and to-day it is a perfect union, a veritable brotherhood. From the highest General to the humblest "piou-piou" there is but one aim, one ideal, prince and peasant pursue it to the end. One and all know that if success is to be achieved against heavy odds, it is by the help of the real brotherhood, the feeling that the accidents of birth and fortune do not count any longer, that "a man's a man for a' that." Other countries have caught a glimpse of the truth, our own among the number, but it needed French clarity of vision to recognise the truth and crystallise it in a word--a simple word with the mystic number of letters and so powerful that, when it becomes the rallying cry in times of peace for all civilised nations, the evils under which men and women labour will be swept away like chaff before wind.

For many years past I have been convinced that the enemies of mankind are not men. Ignorance, poverty, greed, vice, disease, these are the foes that prey upon all communities, and while those who foster them are of no brotherhood, those who would combat them need no more than brotherhood in order to overcome. War, in which a man makes the supreme surrender, in which he discounts the terror of death and makes purposes splendid by his devotion, reveals the truth even to those who have never thought before. Will brotherhood survive war, or does it need the exaltation born of the greatest of world tragedies to open a nation's eyes--and keep them open?

The history of our civilisation depends upon the answer to this question. Nothing less than brotherhood will enable the nation to face the widespread poverty that already exists, but will not be recognised until peace is restored. There will be very little money left in the countries of combatant nations, and there will be very many needs. The care of the wounded, the maimed and the helpless, provision for the widows and the children of war will come first. Then there are the schools; nothing is more vital to the future generation than education, and few great claims are more in danger of a grudging treatment.

There are two ways of handling a nation's affairs, one is to make the rich richer at the expense of the poor, the other is to make the poor less poor at the expense of the rich. The peaceful solution of the whole problem is found in the battle call of our gallant Allies. If we are "camarades, bons camarades!" we can endure our national privations and scarcely feel them, for we shall all be in the same boat, and it is not poverty that galls but the contrast between poverty and wealth. Down to the time when war began this contrast was ever present, it was becoming one of the great dangers of our time; it has not disappeared to-day, but it is far less noticeable, and as we continue to spend between thirty and forty million pounds a week on war, the cases of contrast will tend to grow less and less. I look for the time when men and women will find it as distressing to flaunt riches as the poor find it to display the outward and indisputable signs of poverty. One does not envy even now the state of mind that enables a man to say that he is "doing very well out of this war."

Among "comrades" such a thing would be impossible, the only excuse for making money out of national misfortune is to be found in its wise distribution to alleviate the suffering that war renders inevitable. To amass wealth from the country's needs, to spend it on purely personal ends, to allow an orgie more terrible than the Black Death to fill private coffers, this surely is the negation of brotherhood, and those who do it are the outcasts of civilisation, even though they purchase palaces and peerages and every honour that unscrupulous Governments vend in semi-privacy. How will the men who have thrown their lives into the scale tolerate the men who trafficked in the necessities of life, or the implements of death, and demand the high places as a reward for successful huckstering? They will not lightly reckon them in the ranks of the "comrades"; in a world founded on brotherhood there will be no place for them. If there be a place in the near future perhaps it will be the nearest lamp-post. Stranger things have happened.

Sometimes I think we could afford to lose this war, or, at least, not to win it, if the Frenchman's battle call could become the rallying cry of all parties and all grades in this country. Much as I loathe war and all it stands for, I feel that an instant victory would have been very bad for us, while a success won by waiting must at least purge our national life of the grosser elements. The mingling of high and low, of rich and poor, the price of strife demanded of each and all, the community wrought by suffering and by heavy loss, all these things are salutary for a nation grown plethoric by prosperity. It will not greatly matter if we lose half the world and gain our own souls, for the simple reason that an England wide-eyed, clean-limbed, and efficient could yet achieve and retrieve, while an England besotted by sloth and bemused by riches can only endure until the advent of a stronger and more determined race.

Whatever our destiny, whatever the future holds in store, we shall be happy indeed if we can face difficulties, dangers, privation, or supreme victory with the cry of "Comrades!" When war came, this country was fast sinking towards civil strife, drifting for lack of the spirit of good fellowship. A few masters, innumerable men, industry organised into limited liability companies that the human touch, the community between employer and employed, might cease, the wealth of the country divided on lines that gave 90 per cent. to a tenth of the population and divided the remaining one-tenth of the wealth between 90 per cent. of the people who create it,--these conditions were making for a social upheaval of bloodiest kind. Education starved, an infant mortality greater than the present waste of war, discontent, ill-feeling, class hatred, all these things were, all these things may be again, but not if the cry of "Comrades!" is taken up.

Whether we win or lose, I see civil unrest inevitable, for this war has sounded the death-knell of the old industrial, social, and political conditions. Nothing within the range of possibility can leave us just where we are, and worse than the struggle with an enemy is the struggle with a friend. Though I hold all war to be fratricidal, yet civil war must ever remain the worst form of it. As soon as the old problems force their way again to the fore the danger of civil strife becomes imminent, and let us remember that the working classes that come back from war will have forgotten what fear means. It seems to me that salvation lies in the Frenchman's fighting cry, that in giving his brothers a lead he has offered a lead to civilisation. He has shown us how to make the inevitable changes peacefully.

Idealism is out of fashion to-day because--let us not burke the truth--our idealists were deceived about Germany's intentions, and those in high places unconsciously misled the people. Yet let us cling to our ideals, for they may prove our best possession, and let us realise that the cry of "Comrades!" may, as years pass and the old bitterness dies away, extend across frontiers and bind in a common brotherhood the sons of the men who sought to destroy one another. Such is the potency of a word that revivifies life, laughs at wounds and disarms death. It sums up the aspirations of the greatest reformers and social workers of old time, of the men, from John Ball to William Morris, who strove for England. Only the French people, with their innate sense of selection, could have picked upon a word that can sum up the best of the ideals of the human race. We are their debtors for it, and there is no nobler way of paying the debt than by developing the cry until it resounds from one end to the other of our Empire. It will renew our youth, it will destroy many of the old evils that were even worse than war, it will realise the ambitions of men who lived and died for England in times of peace, when there is no reward for social heroism other than the consciousness of a supreme effort made on behalf of people one may never see, people who will never understand.

If the future of the world is with sane, wide-eyed democracies; if man is to be free to do the world's work and develop human destiny without turning aside at the bidding of kings and rulers; if humanity, with its common lot and destiny, is to develop the spirit of brotherhood that makes life beautiful,--we could have no finer rallying cry than France has offered. I do not believe that the country capable of originating and responding to it can be beaten by sheer weight of numbers; I feel that it is one of the world's assets, and that somewhere in the background the Great Force we strive to comprehend, and, comprehending, to worship, will guard it against ultimate defeat. To doubt this were to believe that the race is to the swift and the battle to the strong, and that the man who can invent the most efficient machinery can dominate God's world. Such a belief is to me the most unpardonable form of atheism. This world was not made, was not populated, was not instructed, that soulless machinery might hold it in thrall at last. The French know this, hence the battle cry that thrills me as I write.

IX

THE CURSE OF AUTOCRACY

In the great gale that sweeps over Europe the few rags that hide the nakedness of monarchy flutter like scarecrows; I find myself watching for the gust that will reveal to the gaze of the least discerning what a dangerous and ridiculous thing the bare bones of kingship have become.

England has filed the teeth of the serpent, it can bite no more--the phrase is Swinburne's not mine. We keep our kings as we keep the Regalia in the Tower, well housed and well looked after, and between the ruler and the ruled there is a pleasant, but indefinite relationship. Kingship for us is the focus of patriotism and loyalty, but we should not go to war because the house of Guelph were jealous of the house of Hapsburg, or on bad terms with the house of Hohenzollern.