Finally, the story will have failed in its purpose, if it has not shown something of what women feel towards war; if it has not shown that militarism is likely to find in woman, its most vigorous opponent, not because woman lacks courage to face death, but because she is awake to the duty of facing life; life as the basis, the evolutionary basis, of a higher life.
Until woman had obtained some experience of war, she could only express sentiments concerning war; but now she is at liberty to give opinions as to the meaning of war. And in the opinion of woman—at least, of one woman, who is, presumably, representative of some other women—war means—the failure of society.
Society has failed to protect its members from its own more savage elements; it has failed to overcome the tendency to atavism, latent in all living creatures; it has failed in its primary function of preserving life. In all its dealings with life, society shows cynicism and inconsistency. It punishes the taking of life, called "murder," by a further taking of life, which it calls the "death penalty." Again, society holds that no motive justifies murder when it is retail, and concerns individuals; but that when murder is wholesale, and concerns nations, no motive justifies abstention from the murder-fields.
Society thus teaches that the taking of life, though it is regarded as the biggest crime, and receives the biggest punishment, is not, in itself, wrong. It is only, on some occasions, and for some social purposes, inexpedient. Society is not yet awake to the idea that, for spiritual purposes, the taking of human life is always inexpedient, because human life is not an end in itself, but a stepping-stone to further life, which may possibly be forfeited by blundering mankind.
In the eyes of woman, war also means the negation of civilisation and of progress. Of what use the care and labour spent in science, art, culture, education, if, at the command of militarism, these and their votaries are to be periodically blotted out.
Civilisation, as we were taught, meant the progress of the human race in ideals, spiritual and moral. Civilisation, as our children are being taught, means progress in the invention of machines for destroying life—the one thing on earth which can't be made by machines. (The word "artillery," with its present murderous meaning, derived from Latin "ars," "artis," art!)
War means that all the finest intellects, of the finest of God's creatures, are set to vie one with the other—on what false track of evolution are we rushing?—to vie, one with the other, how best to destroy life and to precipitate death! Death is sacred, but not life.
War means blood, slaughter, brutality, deformities, and always death, death, death. Is man jealous of God, that he destroys God's handiwork, and spares his own, when he runs amok? When the Germans destroyed, at Louvain, the works of man, a howl of horror rose from every voice and newspaper throughout the civilised world. But during this European war, thousands of unique specimens of the works of God, Europe's finest manhood, are every day being destroyed, and we are still waiting for the howl of horror.
The other day I was told by one who witnessed it, that, from one trench, 800 men were killed within three minutes. Now it takes women years and years of infinite love, and patience, of sacrifice, and devotion, to mould their sons—their creations—after the image of God, in body, soul and mind. They fashion, with infinite pains, these precious lives for God, and the end is—to be blown to pieces, 800 in three minutes. To this end has the wisdom of Man brought Man. Could the wisdom of Woman bring us to a worse abyss than this? However desperate the remedy, must not the help of woman be hailed, to save life from the abyss?
This thought came to me vividly one summer night in Serbia. It was during the typhus epidemic, and I stumbled unawares upon an open grave. It was three-quarters full of naked corpses. They were typhus victims. They had been prisoners of war, and the grave would not be closed until there were enough dead to fill it. Heavy rain had fallen, and the bodies were half-submerged in water; but I saw one man above the others. His body, long and strong-limbed, was all uncovered, but his face, fine featured, proudly ignorant of the ignominy, his face was covered with—flies; filthy, bloodsucking flies. Round his finely-cut nostrils, his mouth, his half-opened eyes, squatting, buzzing, sucking, shunting one another for best place—flies, flies, flies, and no one to beat them off. Flies in thousands, squabbling for his blood, and no one to beat them off. Only flies knew where he was. His mother was, perhaps, at this moment, picturing him as a hero, and he was—food for flies.