The Next of Kin: Those who Wait and Wonder

by Nellie L. McClung

By three o'clock the hall was full,—women mostly, for it was still the busy time for the men on the farms. Many of the women brought their children with them. Soon after I began to speak, the children fell asleep, tired out with struggling with wind and weather, and content to leave the affairs of state with any one who wanted them. But the women watched me with eager faces which seemed to speak back to me. The person who drives ten miles against a head wind over bad roads to hear a lecture is not generally disposed to slumber. The faces of these women were so bright and interested that, when it was over, it seemed to me that it had been a conversation where all had taken part.

The things that I said to them do not matter; they merely served as an introduction to what came after, when we sat around the stove and the young girls of the company brought us coffee and sandwiches, and mocha cake and home-made candy, and these women told me some of the things that are near their hearts.

"I drove fourteen miles to-day," said one woman, "but those of us who live long on the prairie do not mind these things. We were two hundred miles from a railway when we went in first, and we only got our mail 'in the spring.' Now, when we have a station within fourteen miles and a post-office on the next farm, we feel we are right in the midst of things, and I suppose we do not really mind the inconveniences that would seem dreadful to some people. We have done without things all our lives, always hoping for better things to come, and able to bear things that were disagreeable by telling ourselves that the children would have things easier than we had had them. We have had frozen crops; we have had hail; we have had serious sickness; but we have not complained, for all these things seemed to be God's doings, and no one could help it. We took all this—face upwards; but with the war—it is different. The war is not God's doings at all. Nearly all the boys from our neighborhood are gone, and some are not coming back——"

She stopped abruptly, and a silence fell on the group of us. She fumbled for a moment in her large black purse, and then handed me an envelope, worn, battered. It was addressed to a soldier in France and it had not been opened. Across the corner, in red ink, was written the words, "Killed in action."

"My letters are coming back now," she said simply. "Alex was my eldest boy, and he went at the first call for men, and he was only eighteen—he came through Saint-Éloi and Festubert—But this happened in September."

The woman who sat beside her took up the theme. "We have talked a lot about this at our Red Cross meetings. What do the women of the world think of war? No woman ever wanted war, did she? No woman could bring a child into the world, suffering for it, caring for it, loving it, without learning the value of human life, could she? War comes about because human life is the cheapest thing in the world; it has been taken at man's estimate, and that is entirely too low. Now, we have been wondering what can be done when this war is over to form a league of women to enforce peace. There is enough sentiment in the world in favor of human life if we could bind it up some way."

I gazed at the eager faces before me—in astonishment. Did I ever hear high-browed ladies in distant cities talk of the need of education in the country districts?

"Well-kept homes and hand-knit socks will never save the world," said Alex's mother. "Look at Germany! The German women are kind, patient, industrious, frugal, hard-working, everything that a woman ought to be, but it did not save them, or their country, and it will not save us. We have allowed men to have control of the big things in life too long. While we worked—or played—they have ruled. My nearest neighbor is a German, and she and I have talked these things over. She feels just the same as we do, and she sews for our Red Cross. She says she could not knit socks for our soldiers, for they are enemies, but she makes bandages, for she says wounded men are not enemies, and she is willing to do anything for them. She wanted to come to-day to hear you, but her husband would not let her have a horse, because he says he does not believe in women speaking in public, anyway! I wanted her to come with us even if he did not like it, but she said that she dared not."

"Were you not afraid of making trouble?" I asked.

Alex's mother smiled. "A quick, sharp fight is the best and clears up things. I would rather be a rebel any time than a slave. But of course it is easy for me to talk! I have always been treated like a human being. Perhaps it is just as well that she did not come. Old Hans has long generations back of him to confirm him in his theory that women are intended to be men's bondservants and that is why they are made smaller; it will all take time—and other things. The trouble has been with all of us that we have expected time to work out all of our difficulties, and it won't; there is no curative quality in time! And what I am most afraid of is that we will settle down after the war, and slip right back into our old ways,—our old peaceful ways,—and let men go on ruling the world, and war will come again and again. Men have done their very best,—I am not feeling hard to them,—but I know, and the thoughtful men know, that men alone can never free the world from the blight of war; and if we go on, too gentle and sweet to assert ourselves, knitting, nursing, bringing children into the world, it will surely come to pass, when we are old, perhaps, and not able to do anything,—but suffer,—that war will come again, and we shall see our daughters' children or our granddaughters' children sent off to fight, and their heart-broken mothers will turn on us accusing eyes and say to us, 'You went through all this—you knew what this means—why didn't you do something?' That is my bad dream when I sit knitting, because I feel hard toward the women that are gone. They were a poor lot, many of them. I like now best of all Jennie Geddes who threw the stool at somebody's head. I forget what Jennie's grievance was, but it was the principle that counts—she had a conviction, and was willing to fight for it. I never said these things—until I got this." She still held the letter, with its red inscription, in her hand. "But now I feel that I have earned the right to speak out. I have made a heavy investment in the cause of Humanity and I am going to look after it. The only thing that makes it possible to give up Alex is the hope that Alex's death may help to make war impossible and so save other boys. But unless we do something his death will not help a bit; for this thing has always been—and that is the intolerable thought to me. I am willing to give my boy to die for others if I am sure that the others are going to be saved, but I am not willing that he should die in vain. You see what I mean, don't you?"