Secondly, woman could not fight better than man, even if she could fight as well, and, as an argument for the desirability of giving woman a share in national responsibility, it would be unwise to present her as a performer of less capacity than man. The expediency of woman's participation in national defence could best be proved by showing that there was a sphere of work in which she could be at least as capable as man.
Thirdly, and of primary importance, if the entrance of women into the political arena is an evolutionary movement—forwards and not backwards—woman must not encumber herself with legacies of male traditions likely to compromise her freedom of evolvement along the line of life.
If the Woman's Movement has, as I believe, value in the scheme of creation, it must tend to the furtherance of life, and not of death.
Now, militarism means supremacy of the principle that to produce death is, on occasions—many occasions—more useful than to preserve life. Militarism has, in one country at least, reached a climax, and I believe it is because we women feel in our souls that life has a meaning, and a value, which are in danger of being lost in militarism, that we are at this moment instinctively asking for a share in controlling those human lives for which Nature has made us specially responsible. "Intellect," says Bergson, "is characterised by a natural inability to comprehend life." Woman may be less heavily handicapped in an attempt to understand it?
It may well have been the echo of German cannons which aroused woman to self-consciousness.
Demonstration, therefore, of the capacity of woman to take a useful share in national defence must be given in a sphere of work in which preservation, and not destruction of life, is the objective. Such work was the care of the sick and wounded.
In a former book, War and Women, an account has been given of the founding of the "Women's Convoy Corps," as the practical result of these ideas. The work which was accomplished by members of this Corps, in Bulgaria, during the first Balkan War, 1912-13, afforded the first demonstration of the principle that women could efficiently work in hospitals of war, not only as nurses—that had already been proved in the Crimean War—but as doctors, orderlies, administrators, in every department of responsibility, and thus set men free for the fighting line.
I had hoped that, as far as I was concerned, it would never be necessary again to undertake a form of work which is to me distasteful. But when the German War broke out in August, 1914, I found to my disappointment, that the demonstration of 1912-13 needed corroboration. For I had one day the privilege of a conversation with an important official of the British Red Cross Society, and, to my surprise, he repeated the stale old story that women surgeons were not strong enough to operate in hospitals of war, and that women could not endure the hardships and privations incidental to campaigns.
I reminded him of the women at Kirk Kilisse. "Ah!" he replied, "that was exceptional." I saw at once that he, and those of whom he was representative, must be shown that it was not exceptional. But where there is no will to be convinced, the only convincing argument is the deed. Action is a universal language which all can understand.
I must, therefore, once more enter the arena; for my previous experience of war had corroborated my belief that the co-operation of woman in warfare, is essential for the future abolition of war; essential, that is, for the retrieval of civilisation. For these reasons I must not shirk.