A Woman and the War

by Countess of Frances Evelyn Maynard Greville Warwick

If women enter a theatre or restaurant their own friends and relatives do not rise to receive them. They are liable to be elbowed into the road if men walking abreast can occupy the whole of the pavement. The politeness of the few cultured Germans (pardon the discredited adjective) merely emphasises the boorishness of the vast majority. It might be that the German is waiting for women to be officially recognised as human beings to whom some measure of courtesy or even decency is due. Only when rudeness is "verboten" will rudeness cease.

The country is governed by men for men and women, but according to the marriage rubric woman is actually man's servant. The effect of these conditions upon the morals of the country is deplorable. They give a cachet to vices, even the most odious, and the rate of illegitimacy, about 10 per cent. for the whole empire, is about doubled in Berlin, where the military caste is supreme. The morals of the army are the morals of Berlin, and account not only for the hideous stories published about what took place in Belgium and northern France, but for the recitals not less appalling that one gathers from officers home on leave who have seen sights in the area of German occupation that cannot be set down in print.

Undoubtedly these recitals, if they could reach the heart of Germany, would thrill tens of thousands of honest men with indignation and disgust. I do not believe for a moment that they represent the inclinations of the whole nation. They are rather the action of that section of the nation which, while war endures, must have the upper hand, and during all the years of war-like preparations has reigned supreme. Against this aspect of German national life the women of belligerent and neutral countries alike are arrayed. Whatever their resources or their influence in the councils of their husbands, sons, and brothers, it will be devoted without cease to the destruction of a militarism that degrades and shames womankind. The German woman knows in her heart that her men have in countless instances become perverts, but she is dumb because she is forbidden to speak. In Prussia no woman may organise a union that has political aims; she may not even join one.

It is the purpose of the dominant caste to keep woman in subjection, to restrict her activities to the kitchen, the cradle and the Church, even to deny her the mental and the physical development that might tend to lead her to revolt. Woman may find a limited salvation in the conduct of a business; throughout the German Empire not far short of a million women conduct commercial enterprises of one kind or another, and collectively they strive with some success to better the physical and moral conditions under which their sisters live. No effort of which they have yet been capable has accomplished more than this, their condition of tutelage remains complete.

I do not pretend to be satisfied with the position of women in England: far from it; but here, as in the countries already enumerated, it is better far than in Germany. Women mould public opinion to an appreciable extent; they are able to modify the life of their sex in many important particulars, the best of them exercise sane influence, and all are sufficiently well treated to establish a definite attitude of mind in men. We know that no British or French troops would behave in Germany as Germans behaved in Belgium; we know that the honour of honourable women and of helpless children would be safe in the keeping of the French and British officer, and that he would not be called upon to restrain his men from acts of lust and savagery.

We know that there is a public opinion the wide world over among free women and women struggling to be free that will not submit to the domination of any race that does not hold woman in respect. It is on this account, in my opinion, that the unbridled and tolerated savagery of the worst class of German conscript in Belgium and France has cost Germany more than the loss of half a dozen pitched battles. Whatever the irritation caused by the incidents of the war, the Allies know that women the world over are and will remain on their side, for the hegemony of a nation that treats women in peace with contempt and in war with "frightfulness" cannot be contemplated by our sex. We know that in fighting for the cause of the Allies we are fighting for the most downtrodden of the highly civilised women in Europe. At present they would resent our aid—they are patriotic—they have suffered terribly, and in the hour of their trials they mourn and forgive those who treated them ill.

Later on, when peace returns, when the world is purged of violence and its wounds begin their slow and painful process of healing, the German women will recognise that we have been fighting for a larger cause than our own; that we helped to force the doors that have remained barred so long and to break the chains that bound the women of a great but erring nation. Only the ultimate triumph of the Allies can free the women of Germany, and in time they will realise the truth.

The views of the wisest men are narrow, and few among them will realise or admit even now the truth that woman is now a factor in the world's affairs. When this war is over we shall tell in no uncertain words what is in our hearts. At present we must needs be silent. If those dreamers of world empire had but remembered that women, too, have minds and are learning to use them, the story of the great world tragedy, even if it had to be set down, would have been widely different in many of its incidents.

It was Germany's fatal mistake that, not content with dominating its own womankind and suppressing them whenever and wherever possible, it believed that the rest of the world was equally indifferent to the treatment of its mothers, wives, and daughters.

Every known outrage has raised fresh fighters, has strengthened the Allies with the sure force of moral sympathy and encouragement, has thinned the ranks of those whose sympathies were with a country whose marvellous progress provides so much material for admiration. Who can measure the responsibility of those guides and teachers who taught the German to develop along material lines and to forget that woman is the proper spiritual guide, and that as man loves and reverences her he sees farther and deeper into the heart of things—sees life sanely and sees it whole?