The alleviation of distress among women caused by the dislocation of employment due to the war was our first object. When events rendered efforts in this direction no longer necessary, we enlarged the scope of our activities so as to include everything that was calculated to "sustain the vital energies of the nation." But the preliminary necessity in that first week of the war was to know that we had the backing of our societies throughout the country. We had consulted them by post on August 3rd, and we met again on August 6th to consider the replies received. Ninety-nine per cent. of these acquiesced in our suggestion. Two of them contained sketch plans of methods of work on the new lines. We concentrated at first on using our whole organization for the relief of distress caused by the war. We suggested to each of our societies that it should formally offer the services of its officers and members to the Lord Mayor, Mayor, or Chairman of the Council in its own district, and should volunteer to take part in the local relief committees which were being formed in every local government area under directions issued by the Local Government Board. Like almost everyone else in those troubled, anxious times, we expected that there would be a great deal of distress owing to unemployment; and there was temporarily great dislocation of industry and lack of work, especially among women. On August 27th, 1914, we unanimously adopted a resolution, moved and seconded by our hon. secretary and hon. parliamentary secretary, urging the Government, long before anything of the kind had been done, to adopt the principle in the Government offices, and in all suitable occupations, of the substitution of women's labour for men's. We pressed this on the Government with the double motive—to increase the demand for women's labour, and to set free a large number of men of military age who were keenly anxious to join the newly forming armies. Our suggestion met with no response. But I cannot but look back with gratification that we made it at that early date.
While out-of-work distress lasted among women, we opened, in various parts of the country, forty workshops, and gave employment to over 2,000 women. I well remember the resentment and melancholy of some able young women in our employment when they saw the advertisements everywhere displayed calling upon young men to join the colours, announcing in huge letters Your Country wants You, and reflected that their country did not want them. We endeavoured, so far as lay in our power, to check this feeling of discontent by not diminishing our own demand for the services of women. We did not add to the volume of unemployment by dismissing on account of the war any of our staff or organizers. We paid the salaries and lent the services of nearly 150 trained workers all over the country to local relief committees and other bodies responsible for carrying out new work connected with the war.
The officers of our societies in many parts of the country showed great initiative in finding out what the soldiers wanted, and doing it for them. As an example, I may mention the case of the hon. secretary of one of our Kentish societies. It was in the neighbourhood of a large training camp where 12,000 men were congregated. The existing local arrangements for their laundry were quite inadequate, and this lady, of University education, ran a laundry for them most successfully and efficiently. She appealed not only to the well-to-do, but also to domestic servants and other working women in the neighbourhood, to give time regularly in their afternoons to do the necessary mending. She herself devoted her whole time to the work of the laundry, which was a great success from the first.
The London society of the N.U.W.S.S. devoted its great powers and wide experience of London conditions to sorting out efficient women workers to positions where such services, paid or unpaid, were urgently required. This work, under the name of Women's Service, it has continued, with success and efficiency, to the present time. Its energies have been remarkably varied. For instance, it provided the London General Omnibus Company with a hundred women conductors when first the need for them was felt; it was constantly applied to by the War Office and other public departments for women fitted to carry out all kinds of novel employments, such as the judging of the quality and the forwarding of hay for the army. It registered the first great rush of the Belgian refugees, and organized this so efficiently that, when the numbers to be dealt with became so great that the work had to be handed over to Government officials, no change in the system of registration had to be introduced. The London society has from the beginning of the war greatly extended the area of women's employment. It opened a small workshop and taught women acetylene welding for aeroplane work until this establishment was taken over by the Government. H.M. the Queen honoured this workshop by a surprise visit in the summer of 1916, and pleased the workers very much by taking a workshop cup of tea seated on an overturned packing-case.
I believe all our societies, from Cornwall to Stornoway, except those in the prohibited areas, did their part in providing hospitality for the Belgian refugees. The London society opened nine hostels for them in its area, and forwarded to the Government several hundred offers of private hospitality.
Over sixty of our societies, immediately after the declaration of war, devoted themselves to life-saving activities by the formation of maternity centres, baby clinics, schools for mothers, and other similar associations.
Forty-five of our societies became Red Cross centres. One of our societies, within a very few weeks of the outbreak of war, offered to staff and equip a hospital at a naval base in the North of Scotland, but the chief medical officer and the C.O. rejected the offer, with the remark that they did not wish to be troubled by "hysterical women." The officers and members of our societies were extremely active in establishing and providing the necessary funds and labour for keeping up canteens for soldiers on railway-stations, also in starting clubs, guest-rooms, and houses of rest for soldiers. At many of these educational facilities were given, French classes being particularly called for. We also did everything in our power to call attention to and to check the terrible waste which at the outset was taking place in the training camps for soldiers; and our organization was first in the field, afterwards so well tilled by the war savings committees, to call attention to the great national importance of personal and household economy. Many of our most active societies initiated war savings exhibitions and demonstrations in their own area, and by precept and practice showed the great national importance of personal thrift. In London, Liverpool, Cardiff, Brighton, and many other places, we held these "patriotic housekeeping" exhibitions, where short addresses were given, war economy recipes distributed, etc. To women of all classes who constantly passed through them we did not fail to bring home the importance of small daily savings, showing that if every one of us in our domestic expenditure could save on an average twopence a head per day, Sundays excepted, this would be a shilling a week, and a shilling a week for 45,000,000 people, fifty-two weeks in the year, meant an annual saving of £117,000,000. In this way we countered the so-called "argument" so frequently heard: "What is the good of my saving my poor little pence when the Government is throwing away millions in absolute waste, for which no one is a farthing the better?" Women, we reminded our audiences, everywhere and in all classes, were the domestic Chancellors of the Exchequer: domestic expenditure was almost wholly in their hands. Women had often been told in contempt that their business was to "mind the kitchen"; and now they joyfully and proudly determined they would mind the kitchen, and do their part in the service of their country by saving hundreds of millions per year; and they also determined to do this while seeing that by skilful management the physical health of those under their charge was in no way impaired. Their job was to see that every ounce of raw material passing through their hands yielded its full food value.
I have already touched in an earlier chapter on the most important of all the war activities of the N.U.W.S.S.—the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service, initiated and carried through by the genius and devotion of the hon. secretary of our Scottish Federation, Dr. Elsie Inglis. Her name and her great work are now known and honoured throughout the world, and it is unnecessary here to dwell upon them at any length. In the old days before the war Dr. Inglis used to say she had two passions, "suffrage and surgery." Before the end of her honoured life came she added to these two S's yet another, "Serbia." How this came about is worth recalling, and can be studied in detail in the "Life of Dr. Elsie Inglis," by Lady Frances Balfour. It affords an example of "the soul of goodness in things evil would men observingly distil it out." Her first wish in September, 1914, was to place her services, her knowledge and skill in her profession, at the service of her country. In an interview with a high official of the R.A.M.C. at the War Office in that month, when she asked his advice as to what course she should take, his reply was: "Dear lady, go home and keep quiet"—in other words, her help was refused. The British Red Cross adopted the same attitude. She was therefore compelled to place her organization under the French Red Cross. The great hospital at Royaumont was the first to be established. The N.U.W.S.S. Scottish Women's Hospitals were complete hospital units, officered entirely by women. The physicians and surgeons, nurses, dressers, orderlies, motor drivers, and domestic staff were all women. The whole scheme was initiated by Dr. Elsie Inglis, and was enthusiastically taken up by the whole N.U.W.S.S. The work quickly grew to large proportions. I have a letter from Dr. Inglis, dated October 13th, 1914, on the financial aspect of her scheme. At that date she only had £213 in hand. At the date of writing this, August 18th, 1919, the total collected for the S.W.H. amounted to £428,905 1s. 3d. The total number of beds in France and Serbia for which the organization was responsible exceeded 1,800. Powerful committees were formed in Scotland, South Wales, and in London to support the hospitals, and their membership was not confined to the N.U.W.S.S.—indeed, especially in Scotland, several influential non-suffragists joined in promoting the great work. It must not for a moment be supposed that only suffragists were active and devoted. It was recognized by the instinctive common sense of the great majority of women throughout the whole country, suffragist and non-suffragist, militant and non-militant, that their first duty was by every practical means in their power to strengthen the resources of their country so as to aid it to issue successfully from the great struggle. Those who took a contrary view did exist, but their numbers were very small. But it is a source of pride and thankfulness that the womanhood of the whole country, quite irrespective of political party or creed, were eager to do everything in their power to help their country. The "militants" immediately abandoned militant tactics. Many of them took part in what was known as the Women's Emergency Corps, which readily undertook a large variety of patriotic activities. Several well-known antisuffragists, among them Mrs. Humphry Ward and Miss Gladys Pott, did patriotic work of a first-class kind. Among the former "militants," two, Dr. Flora Murray and Dr. Louisa Garrett Anderson, were, I believe, the very first women doctors to take out a well-equipped hospital unit, officered entirely by women, to France. The necessary funds were privately subscribed. It was of these ladies that Surgeon-General Sir Alfred Keogh, head of the R.A.M.C., afterwards said that they "were worth their weight, not in gold, but in diamonds." He had by this time had practical experience of their professional and personal work, both in Paris and, later, in another hospital at Wimereux. Sir Alfred Keogh's words were no empty compliment, for he very shortly afterwards placed Dr. F. Murray and Dr. L. G. Anderson at the head of a large military hospital of 520 beds in London, posts which carried the rank of Major in the army.
Their first hospital was established in a spacious hotel in the Champs Elysées, and was described as the best equipped in Paris. It became quite a show place, and those who visited it were full of admiration for the devotion, care, and skill with which the patients were tended. The men were most grateful and appreciative of the skill of the women surgeons, dressers, and nurses. "There was a wonderful atmosphere of sympathy and home about the wards, and the men were not slow to respond to it," wrote a visitor. Another visitor asked one of the wounded men: "Is it possible there are no men surgeons in this place?" The man, a Highlander, replied by another question: "And what would we be wanting men for?" Other hospitals officered by women were taken out to Belgium and the North of France quite independently of the N.U.W.S.S.; but the Scottish Women's Hospitals were the only ones which were originated and run, as one of their main pieces of war work, by a suffrage organization.