A Woman and the War

by Countess of Frances Evelyn Maynard Greville Warwick

On the Continent, war is one of the incidents of normal life. Men are trained to take part in it as a completion of their education, women are encouraged to applaud it as the source of all honours and distinction. England and America, the two least threatened countries, would hardly appear in a good light as peace propagandists on the Continent, for war is received in a certain false perspective there. Thousands glory in the thoughts of a campaign, proud to have taken part in one as our grandfathers were to empty two or three bottles at a sitting. This false perspective is the greatest danger we have to face in educating the people: it must be destroyed before war will be seen as the thing it is.

Human nature being hard to move, the work must progress slowly, but it is not the less worth undertaking on that account. Sane peace propaganda, accompanied by encouragement of physical fitness and explanation of the significance of life, need offend none, and will benefit all.

The real facts of war must be within reach of everybody, the camera should preserve the records of trench, battlefield, and sacked town. Every city should engrave its list of dead where all may read, and in the cities that have suffered from invasion the full details of the horror should be preserved. The taxation that will grip Europe for many a year to come should always be associated with its prime cause, and every device should be sought to impress upon the children who will now be growing up into an impoverished world, the folly and helplessness of their parents who were unable to keep what they had inherited, whether of freedom or worldly wealth.

We who are middle-aged will be hardly called upon to see war again, the generation captured in its prime between the summers of 1914 and 1916, will have been ruined, the rule of the world will wait upon those who are just leaving school.

Here the propagandists must work, and as there is hardly a big family in belligerent Europe that has not contributed life or fortune in some degree, the foundation for the work will stand prepared.

If I were asked how to develop sane peace propaganda, I would call upon those who have gone through the war to tell the full story to those who have remained behind. All should unite to this end when war is over. Not only should the Englishman tell of frozen trenches and waterless deserts, but Germans and Austrians should tell of the retreat in Galicia and the advance to the marshes of Poland and Russia. The Servian retreat to Albania and the nameless horrors of Armenia should be recorded by survivors, women for choice, and men of all belligerent countries should speak of the horrors of the man-of-war that sinks blazing into the depths.

The camera has a tale to tell of devastated country-side and ruined city, of all the havoc and waste of war. Let that tale be told.

Let the maimed, the crippled, the blind, the physically useless, come forward—our eyes will learn their lesson.

Let the Churches speak, not at the bidding of authority, but in response to the plea of humanity.

Let War, divorced from the physical training incumbent upon men and women alike, take its place by the side of cancer, cholera, and plague.