And then the cataclysm of war descended upon all Europe and civilized man went mad for murder—wholesale terrible murder without reason or purpose. Sickened by the cry for blood, the women’s fight became holy in its significance to me. I saw England change in five minutes when on the streets of London the first cry of war was heard. In a lightning shift Trafalgar Square became a seething mass of gesticulating people—a mob which seemed instantly to drop its sacred inheritance of “good form” and give way to wild and ominous protest and speak eloquently of “an honor” to be upheld; but just what “the honor” was no one seemed to know.
Berlin sang all night to the tune of “Die Wacht Am Rhein,” in celebration of the opportunity given the fittest of the Vaterland to slaughter and be slaughtered by the pick of the neighboring countries. But the reason and purpose for the slaughter they did not know.
Russia, famous for its barbaric cruelty to the Poles and Jews, asks for the sacrifice of the races and thinks itself a generous Christian if in return it promises to give what is left of them the right to their mother-tongue and the privilege to worship God in their own way.
And what of the women? For the first time I felt the real greatness of the women’s fight and the sad futility of it before man’s ignorance. For the first time I felt the real tragedy of the women of Europe whose business it is to bring up sons for the man’s game of war. And to see them now is to see death—a calm bitter death surrounded by panic and catastrophe.
Children of War
Eunice Tietjens
Out of the womb of war we cry to you,
We who have yet to be,
We who lie waiting in the strong loins of time, unformed and hesitant,
We who shall be your sons and your slim daughters.