It has been seen that properly trained women can do all the work of farm and garden. Even ploughing is not beyond them, save on very stiff clay soils. They are entirely successful in handling animals; horses, cows, bullocks, sheep, pigs, and goats are all tractable when cared for by women. They are taught at all well-conducted institutions to substitute knack for force, and they have, as is admitted on all hands, the right temperament for tasks that demand not only time, but patience. As beekeepers they do very well, the gift of delicate handling standing them in good stead, and in the glasshouses they are easily first. Dr. Hamilton, the energetic and gifted Warden of Studley, tells me that she finds that the health of girls engaged upon the land, whether in the garden or on the farm, is good, and that many who arrive at the College in a delicate state of health grow very much stronger. She finds that the work makes women not only healthy, but happy—presumably because happiness is largely a product of good health.
Perhaps the needs of the country will be the determining factor in sending women to the land in the summer-times before us; but we may take it for granted that one of the results of war will be the large extension of the realm of the woman-worker of the field and garden. We cannot shut our eyes to the sad truth that there will be war widows in their thousands, and countless girls whose chances of married happiness have been destroyed. To many of these the land will supply the only anodyne that life has to offer. In hard work and the open air they will learn to forget; in the development of garden, or farm, or orchard they will find something to interest them. With their advent we may look to find a great addition to the national food supply, a great saving of money that has gone hitherto across the Channel or the Atlantic Ocean.
I am inclined to think that women are more likely than men to take advantage of the homeland opportunities. Men who have lived strenuously and dangerously may not be found content with a handful of acres and a cartload of restrictions at home, when the far-flung Dominions overseas have so much more with which to tempt them. I see that Sir Harry Verney's Committee, appointed to consider the question of land settlement for soldiers and sailors, suggested holdings of twenty-five acres for dairy-farming, and four-acre holdings for pigs, poultry, fruit, etc. These last are to cost £24 per annum. Consider as against this the one hundred and sixty acre grant of the Canadian Government, the additions made by the Canadian Pacific Railway and, perhaps, other great corporations, whereby a settler finds a house, farm buildings, fifty acres broken up and planted with wheat. There the rent is part payment of the purchase price. I do not think the Government is going to hold soldiers and sailors with anything Sir Harry Verney and his committee-men propose to offer, but I do think that if the Government will make a like offer to the women of England, and will arrange to do for them what it proposes to do for the men, this latest scheme of small holdings might well be a success. Women could and would make an agricultural colony. They delight in doing small things well; they are frugal and temperate; they can make much out of very little. Whatever their war experiences and suffering, it will not have developed in them the spirit of unrest. Their ambitions do not seek the particular kind of achievement that appeals most to men; they find happiness where a man might find boredom. They love the sense of independence, the freedom and simplicity that country life affords and enjoins.
Above all else that concerns woman's career on the land, it has clearly been shown now that in times of crisis the men who work on the land may be called away, and our home food supplies may be jeopardised by their absence. In these circumstances the movement must spread. The flower and market garden, the field, the conservatory, and the outhouse must be recognised as providing a pleasant sphere of activity for girls and women, and there is more than enough land in these islands to provide small holdings for many years to come for all who have the will and the capacity to develop them. In conclusion, let me utter a warning that demands the attention of all who love their country. At the present time we only produce about twenty per cent. of the food we eat. For the rest we depend upon our mercantile marine and our power to hold, not only the seas, but the skies above and the depths beneath. Without any comment, it seems to me that this simple and undeniable statement should suffice to settle the career of many a sturdy country-loving English girl.
XI GERMAN WOMEN AND MILITARISM
Reading the record of Germany's war methods, even those of us who are endeavouring to think sanely through these evil days must be impressed by the overwhelming evidence of their complete ruthlessness.
We who have travelled in Germany not once, but many times, know full well that harshness and cruelty are not associated with the majority. There are countless Germans who could only be cruel in obedience to orders, and, of course, every German will do what he is told, just as the Children of Israel did when Joshua, who appears to have invented "frightfulness," was carrying out his merciless campaign. If we admit that the simple German of the south is not cruel at heart, that he is rather a dreamer and a sentimentalist with strong love for domestic pleasures, we find that the policy of "frightfulness" must be ascribed to the military party, consisting for the most part of Prussians, with headquarters in Berlin.
These men are the organisers of war, and speak through the mouths of writers like Treitschke, Bernhardi, and the rest. It is they who have torn up the treaties and conventions that were, humanity hoped, to decide the conduct of war. They are responsible for the curious outburst of national hatred against this country that is at once so startling and so silly, a revelation of the sad truth that Germany is suffering from neurosis.