A Woman and the War

by Countess of Frances Evelyn Maynard Greville Warwick

I do not write in any bitterness of spirit, but I remember how long, and successfully the race-course struggled against the war, how definitely Mr. Lloyd George's attempt to end the drink traffic was defeated by the "trade," and how, on the other hand, certain alleged economies in our schools, designed to save a few pounds at the cost of efficiency, have been accepted with hardly a protest.

If we wish to raise another generation that may benefit by the lessons we have learned and paid so dearly for, we must educate it, and education must be recognised as a necessity, something as necessary to us as the bread we eat, and more important than professional politicians, public-houses, race-courses, theatres, and motor-cars; more vital to our welfare than all the amusements of the rich and the poor put together.

Without education, the best ideas, the highest ideals must be lost and, as things are here, so they are elsewhere. In Europe the only belligerent countries that have developed education all over their territory are France and Germany. In some of the other countries, the schoolmaster does not cover a tithe of the domain, and rulers do not wish to see the area of activity enlarged, partly because they understand it is easier to deceive, divide, and rule the ignorant, and partly because they know that the rank and file will not be able to keep pace with the enlightened intelligences to which the most restless elements in the State will be attracted. Autocratic rule cannot endure indefinitely in countries where the proletariat has been to school, even military domination might in time be questioned.

But what bearing has this upon world war? you may ask, and I reply that it has a considerable bearing upon the whole question, because the great majority of those who ensue peace are preaching just now to the converted.

Those who make the next war may be despotic or unconstitutional rulers, if Europe is of a mind to endure such people after this, but they will depend largely upon the uneducated classes, or upon an iron discipline that makes every man a slave of him who represents the State. Education is the one reliable antidote to absolute monarchy, and despite its complete failure in July and August, 1914, I am still inclined to have faith in the International. It failed then, for each belligerent country called out that it was in danger, and in that hour when the social democracy might have saved Europe from the loss of millions of promising lives, the savings of one generation and the progress of two, it failed. But nobody will recognise more completely than the social democrat the price of failure; he will see that democracy must be in future as independent of boundaries as is art or science.

I believe that scores of men and women have the right peace methods, that there are many plans by which peace might be assured to the world, but no one of these can possibly become effective unless it can appeal to the men who constitute the rank and file of the world's armies, and to their wives and sweethearts.

The only other way out of the tangle is for victory to fall upon the side of those who are really concerned to keep the peace, and there is more than a little danger in this, for those who are concerned only with peace are apt to forget war altogether—to neglect necessary precautions, cut down reasonable expenditure, and in short, to give the war-loving, but weaker races, a chance of challenging peace afresh. A union of the world's democracies is the cure for war, and this union is not possible until a certain standard of education has been reached by one and all. Only then will the man to whom fighting is the breath of life understand that he must control his murderous instincts or perish by them.

This war cost many years of preparation, part of it secret, and it is hard to see that peace can be more than a state of neutrality enforced by poverty and exhaustion. To make it abiding will need something more than the skill and cunning of diplomats, it will require the consent of the people themselves, and this they will give when they have knowledge, and not before.

Educate! Use all the modern developments of our civilisation to that end. Let every child in Europe be taught to read and be supplied with books; let every new railway line be hailed as an ambassador of peace. Let interchange of visits be arranged between the workers of all countries, so that they may learn that antagonisms belong to their rulers and not to them.[2] It would be a fine thing to have a panacea that acted as quickly as quack medicines claim to act, but we all know that such cures do not exist. You cannot accomplish in a few months the work that thousands of years have left unfinished. After all that has been said, let us remember that war has been allowed to be the rule of life for countless generations. We in England have hardly suffered, the United States have kept free from actual invasion, but nearly all the other great Powers have known its horrors within the comparatively brief period of our lifetime.