A Woman and the War

by Countess of Frances Evelyn Maynard Greville Warwick

I have been trying to trace "frightfulness" to its source, not through the medium of books or papers, but in the light of my own knowledge of the country and my past acquaintance with some of its leading men, and I think that the philosophic historian of the times to come, whose vision is not obscured by the smoke of battle or the fury of combatants, will not hesitate to declare that the worst and saddest features of war as waged by the Germans are due to the fact that in their country women are kept more in the background than in the country of any other great Power.

The fault, as I will point out later on, is not that of the women, but of the leaders of German faction who have deliberately suppressed woman, and of nearly all the leaders of German thought who, being dependent on Government favour, have subscribed to their policy of deliberate suppression. Here and there an independent thinker has arisen nearly always from the ranks of Social Democracy. Bebel's book on women, for example, is a standard work, but the few lights do no more than emphasise the surrounding darkness.

Look round Europe for a moment. Russia is a backward empire and the spirit of progress moves over it with slow feet, but Russia is making vast strides, and the plough that will trace deep furrows in the virgin soil of its social life is drawn by man and woman together. All the professions are open to women, even those in which women are not found here. The Russian engineer who planned the newest bridge over the Neva was a woman. Men and women students work side by side on terms of absolute equality, and compete for honours that often fall to the gentler sex.

Russian women of the educated classes are more than merely well informed, they are brilliant. Linguists, women of affairs, they have a grip of actualities of the empire of which they form a significant part. In spite of autocratic rule and limited freedom there is such a full life for the Russian woman as her German sister has never known, except in dreams of emancipation. In Finland, be it remembered, women sit in Parliament.

Turn to France, and it may be declared emphatically that woman rules. Women are doctors, barristers, and scientists; they are members of the Goncourt Academy; they are the heads of some of the most important business institutions; they give the most exclusive salons their distinction. Public opinion is moulded by them; their influence makes and breaks Cabinets. Feminism is one of the strongest forces in France. Quiescent to-day or working in quietness, this force will dominate a France released from war.

Even in Belgium, of whose progress we hear little, women have been largely responsible for the organisation of the middle and working classes, an organisation that was well-nigh complete before war broke out, and in the slow rebuilding that is to come we may look with confidence to the Belgian woman to play a leading rôle. Turn to a group of neutral countries—Denmark, Norway, Sweden—and it will be seen that feminism is moving with vast strides along the path of national progress. Woman is asserting herself in all of them, contributing her thought to her country's problems, taking an ever important place in its councils.

Alone of the great Powers Germany has elected to forget or to disregard as a negligible quantity the opinion of woman, and the reason is not far to seek. For years past the German has forgotten the respect and reverence he owes to his own womenfolk. Küche, Kinder, Kirche—he calls alliteration to his aid to express a growing contempt for the sex and the narrowest possible view of its world function. Intoxicated with the vision of imperial domination, he has regarded his own sex as the one motive force in the universe.

He has not watched the slow awakening of women in the countries around him; he has not noted how bonds of sympathy, light as gossamer, yet strong as steel, have stretched from country to country, binding our sex in a large and ever widening sisterhood, inarticulate now, or at least hardly coherent, but only waiting for their appointed hour to assume a fuller share of the glories, the burdens and the responsibilities of life. Woman's influence, silent, world-wide, pervasive, has been treated by the evangels of Kultur as though it were nonexistent, and in the hour of crisis woman as a united force has avenged herself for years of neglect, scorn and brutality. She is everywhere a belligerent.

I do not know the country in Europe where women are treated as they are in Germany. Not many countries can vie with the United States in the attention bestowed upon the gentler sex, but as I have endeavoured to show, they are respected more in every belligerent country than they are in the one that sought to rest supreme in Europe. Even in Italy, Spain, and Portugal, where women must often work as hard as men, they stand upon a secure footing of affection and respect. The smaller courtesies, the greater services of life are theirs. In some definite measure they complete the home. But you cannot bring an indictment against a whole nation, and I do not seek to do so.

In tens of thousands of German homes the wife and daughters are loved and honoured, but in the rank and file of military circles, even among the men who hold official positions and boast a certain standing, woman has been dethroned—she is regarded as an incumbrance necessary for the production of further generations of supermen, who shall inherit the earth. This attitude of mind reveals itself in the action that speaks louder than words. The toleration and the contempt to which I refer are everywhere apparent. No good-looking woman is safe in Germany from the ill-bred stares and comments of the men with whom she must travel in train or tram.