With a bond as deep as this--a bond always acknowledged and given its meed of recognition by the most thoughtful brains and sensitive hearts--yet, as in marriage, there are bound to be minor irritations, points, not of meeting, but of conflict. Trifles, indeed, these points, compared with the magnitude of the bond which unites, but nevertheless trifles which would be better adjusted than ignored.
In the first place, we must recognise that though the things which unite us, our common ideals, our common needs, are far stronger than any difference in our modes of thought, yet those differences exist, and that, in marriage, it is often said that it is the little things which count.... Heaven forbid that we should so lose sense of proportion as to say it when the matter in hand is the marriage of nations, but nevertheless it is well not entirely to forget it.... And, of all the differences in customs between us, there is probably none more marked than in our way of treating what is known--loosely and with considerable ba.n.a.lity--as the "s.e.x-problem." This is not the place to discuss those differences, though, as one who has known and loved France all her life, I may mention that, personally, I see much to admire in the French system and could wish that we emulated it, but that is neither here nor there at the moment.
France has probably evolved for the happiness and welfare of her womenkind the sort of life which suits best with their temperament and circ.u.mstances. Women, like water, find their own level, and no one who knows France, and knows the devotion, the business capacity, and the good works of her women, imagines them to be the b.u.t.terfly creatures that English fancy used to paint them twenty or thirty years ago. As a matter of fact, the present writer had occasion, two winters ago, to make a close study of the varied scope of women"s work in France--the hospitals for training of _femmes du monde_, the schools like Le Foyer, for the training of young girls of the upper cla.s.ses to help their poorer sisters, etc., etc., all works carried on unostentatiously long before the war broke upon us and proved their usefulness. The "b.u.t.terfly" Frenchwoman underwent, before the war, a far more serious social training than did the happy-go-lucky English girl, and was better equipped in consequence, with a knowledge of economic conditions, than the untrained Englishwoman could be.
But we too have our quality, and I rather think it is to be found in the greater freedom which we are allowed. We were not so well trained, but freedom stepped into the place of custom, and gave the necessary att.i.tude of mind--that unprejudiced, untrammelled att.i.tude which is essential to the quick grasping of a fresh _metier_. That is where our method--or, if you prefer it, our lack of method--helped us, even as their training helped the French. And the French, with their extraordinary facility of vision, do, I think, understand that we have simply pushed our freedom to its logical and legitimate outcome, that we could not be expected, after being accustomed, for many years past, to be on terms of simple easy friendship with men as with our own s.e.x, above all, after working side by side with them since this war began, we could not be expected to say that we could not work with them in France, though we could in England, or that perhaps this girl would, and that girl couldn"t....
We naturally proceeded to act _en ma.s.se_ as we had acted individually, to do on a large scale what had been done on a small, to manipulate great bodies of women where before a few friends had worked together. In every large body of persons there are bound to be one or two individuals who fail to come up to the required standard, but that does not alter the principle that what can safely be done in small quant.i.ties can safely be done in large, provided the conditions are altered to scale.
And that is what we are doing, and what our Government is helping us to do; that is what our Women"s Army and our voluntary workers in France are--the expression, on a large scale, of what bands of women have been doing so successfully on a small scale since the beginning of the war--helping, and even replacing the men. And just as, with our peculiar training and mode of thought, it is possible for the average Englishwoman to eliminate s.e.x as a factor in the scheme of things, so it is possible to eliminate it in greater ma.s.ses. In other words, it is perfectly possible, to men and girls brought up with the English method of free friendly intercourse, to work side by side, to meet, to walk together, and to remain--merely friends. Whether that is a good thing or not is another point altogether, as it is whether it makes for charm in a woman.... Certainly no woman in this world competes with a Frenchwoman for charm. It is as recognised as an Englishwoman"s complexion--and considerably more lasting!
Probably it is only ourselves and the Americans among the races of the world who could have inst.i.tuted such an experiment as that of our Women"s Army, but there is among the nations one which is supreme in "flair," in sympathy, and a certain ability to comprehend intellectually what it might not understand emotionally, and that nation is France.
I am confident that it will never have to be said that when Englishwomen sacrificed so much--and to a Frenchwoman one does not need to point out what a sacrifice it is when a woman risks youth and looks in hard unceasing work--that Frenchwomen failed to understand them or to attribute motives to them other than those that have animated themselves in their own labours throughout the war.
That it must sometimes look odd to them one knows so well; how can it be otherwise? They see the girls, khaki-clad, out walking without "Tommies," hear the sounds of music and dancing coming from the recreation huts, where the girls are allowed to invite the men, and _vice versa_. Yet, if you investigate, you will find out that they are of an extraordinary simplicity, these girls and men, in their intercourse, in their earnest dancing, taught them by instructors from our Young Men"s Christian a.s.sociation, inspired by nothing more heady than lemonade, and chaperoned by the women-officers, who have attained a mixture of authority and motherly supervision over every individual girl that reminds me of nothing so much as the care, born of a sort of divine cunning, of a very dear and clever Mother Superior at a convent I once stayed at in France. For the interesting point for both the French and ourselves to note is that in the treatment of our Women"s Army in France we have taken a leaf out of their book. We look after the girls with something of that love and care which surrounds a girl in France.
For many of the Women"s Army are working girls, who have never been guarded in their lives, whose parents had probably, after the lower-cla.s.s English way, very little influence with them, and who, though good, honest, rough girls, were free to roam the streets of their native towns with their friends every evening once their work was over.
Now, for what is for many of them the first time in their lives, they are being watched and guarded in a manner that is more French than English, and which I find admirable. As for their walks, their friendships with men, the personal observation of the acute French will show them that it is merely our Anglo-Saxon way, and the official statistics will prove to any doubters how well both the girls and the men can be trusted to behave themselves. We are a cold nation if you like, but there it is--it has its excellences, if not its charms.
So much for fundamental differences, which, when intelligence and sympathy go out to meet them, become merely points on which temperaments agree to differ amicably, each giving its meed of admiration to the other. And for minor matters, little things of different customs only, that nevertheless, occasionally, in the strain of this war, ruffle even friends, I would say something like this, which is in the hearts of us all....
France--dear lovely France, to so many of us adored for many years, who has stood to us for the romance of the world, we know that in many things our ways are not your ways and never will be, nor would we wish it otherwise. To each nation her distinctiveness, or she loses her soul. But, when those ways of ours seem to you most alien, say to yourself: "This is only England"s differing way of doing what we are doing, of fighting for what we are fighting for--the saving of the right to individualism, the right to be different...." To gain that we are all having to become alike, just as to win freedom we are having for a time to give it up, and the great thing to remember is that this terrible coherent community life is being borne with only that eventually we may all be free men once more. Let us, for all time, differ in our own ways, rather than agree in the German! But also let us, while differing, understand.
CHAPTER XIV
NOTES AND QUERIES
On my last evening I sat and thought about the girls I had seen and known, in greater and less degrees, in pa.s.sing. And I saw them, not as unthinking "sporting" young things, who were having a great adventure, but as girls who were steadily sticking to their jobs, often without enjoyment save that of knowledge of good work well done. And I thought of those prophets who gloomily foretell that the women will never want to drop into the background again--forgetful of the fact that where a woman is is never a background to herself. I smiled as I thought of the eagerness with which these hard workers in mud and snow and heat will start buying pretty clothes again and going out to parties ... and I was very thankful to know how unchangedly woman they had all remained, in spite of the fact that they had had the strength to lay the privileges and the fun of being a woman aside for a time.
I remembered what the D. of T. had said to me when we discussed the question of how the girls would settle down when it was all over, and how he had thought that even if they did not marry all would be well, because they would have had their adventure.... I remembered too how that had seemed to me the correct answer at the time. Then later, when that awful web of depression caught me, and the horror of the school-girl conditions of life and all the apparent "brightness" had choked me, I had all the more thought it true, but marvelled; later still, when I caught glimpses of that wonderful spirit and that deep sophistication which had so cheered me, I reversed the whole judgment and thought there was nothing in it.
Now, thinking it all over, it seemed to me that somewhere midway lay Truth. These girls have had, in a certain sense, their adventure, but when it is all over, they will have a reaction from it, and I believe that reaction will be pleasant to them, that it will be the reaction, and not the memory of adventure, which will content them. It is certain that to anyone who has worked as these girls work a considerable period of doing nothing in particular will be very acceptable. They will all have to become themselves again, which will be interesting....
Dear, wonderful girls ... you who wash dishes and scrub and sweep, you girls of the Women"s Army who replace men and who do it so thoroughly, you drivers who are out in all weathers, night and day, sometimes for a week or more on end, who face hardships such as were faced in those three weeks at T---- when there were no fires and no water, how glad I am to have met you.... So I sat and thought, and then I picked up a copy of _The Times_ which had just come over. And in the "Personal" column this caught my eye:
"Lady wants war-work, preferably motor-driving, from three to five p.m."
And I saw that it was not only those far removed from the war who misunderstood both what it demands and that which has arisen to meet those demands.
Do we not nearly all fail to realise the magnitude and import of what is being done by these unspectacular workers behind the lines, who are yet part of war itself, and daily and nightly strengthen the hands of the fighters? Some of us in England realise as little as you in far-off countries, and yet it should be our business to know, because the least we can do is to understand so that we, in our much less fine way, can help them a little, one t.i.the of the amount they help our fighting men.
Not because of any desire of theirs for praise is it necessary--I never saw a healthier disregard, amounting to a kindly contempt, for what those at home think or don"t think, than among the women working in France--but because it is only by knowing that we can respond generously enough to the needs of their work, and only by understanding that we can save our own souls from that fat and contented ignorance which induces a sleep uncommonly like death.
Nor, as long as we listen to the girls themselves, are we in any danger of thinking too much of them or of their work. Not a woman I met, English or American, working in France, but said something like this, and meant it: "What, after all, is anything we can do, except inasmuch as it may help the men a little? How could we bear to do nothing when the men are doing the most wonderful thing that has ever been done in the world?"
THE END