WHAT THE WOMEN SAY.

Hokitika Guardian, 17 March 1917, Page 4

WHAT THE WOMEN SAY.

(Grace Mary Golden in London Daily Mail.) How she ciime to be at our working party Ido not remember. I suppose one of the regular- members brought her, f r certainly she had never been before and never came .again, If she bad been an babjtue, well* the rest of us would shortly have resigned ! She could do straight knitting if she was helped at intervals, and she could hem a seam (very badly), but as for cutting out or putting together what other people had cut out, or fashioning a pair of socks or even a muffler off her own bat, she could no more do it than fly, and wbat was more, she did not want to be able to. „I suppose she thought the helpless pose was still in fashion to some extent. But it was not her uselessness that annoyed us so inexpressibly— it was her mental attitude. I did not know that there were any women like her left in England, but, after all, there are some fools that even this war will not cure of their foolishness. fc>ho was evidently one. “ Somehow, it does seem a pity,” she began conversationally in the first convenient pause, “ that we didn’t make peace when the Germans seemed so ready to. It would be so nice to have peace again and all the shops lighted up and food not so frightfully dear, wouldn’t it? And then it’s so dreadful to think of all those boys beiDg killed at the front. There was a picture of such a handsome one in tbe paper this morning—a V.C. I think he was.” There was a pause. A speech like that needs some thought for its adequate answer. 15 You have many relatives fighting, perhaps P” asked someone politely at last-

“Oh, no,” she answered; “my husband is exempt, and I haven’t any near relations of military age. No, the war has really done ns a good turn on the whole, for my husband’s income is just about doubled with Government contracts. But of oonrse” —there was a note of magnanimity in her voics—“ one couldn’t wish the war to go on just because it benefits oneself,” This again seemed a difficult remark to answer, bat finally a quiet woman spoke from a distant corner. “I think,” she said gently, “that it is perhaps because you have not suffered and sacrificed for your country that you feel like that afaont a German peace. I don’t say about a real peace—what we all feel about that is the sort of thing it is quite impossible to express, I think—but this premature patching up of things before the enemy are properly smashed. And, if you will forgive me for saying so, it seems to me that only those who have suffered have any right to say whether they want peace or not.” We looked at tbe Quiet Woman approvingly—we had not known she had this in her. * # * * *

“ If I'm not mistaken,” she wont on “ there are in this room at the present ~ minute representatives of almost every • kind of loss and trouble that the war ,* has given rise to, I wonder,” she • looked round, •* whether we could find out what is the general feeling about fighting to a finish or . making peace now. I will say my say at aoy rate, j- Some of yon kpow that my offly son d was killed early in the war, over two years ago now. He was what most of us call a typical young Englishman, s, absolutely fearleaß and straight and honest where he knew he was right. He waß the centre of my world, almost tty all in all, yet if by voting for the German peace I could bring him back to life I would not do it, If England made peace now it would mean that the country for which he fought and died was not the England he had believed it to be—it would mean, in fact, that bis death was all in vain,” She stopped, and after a moment the War Bride began to speak in her turn. " “ I have been married six months,” she said, “ and my husband went baok to France the day after the wedding. He has been wounded slightly twice since then, and he will be coming home to me soon, without one of his legs and in danger of losing his sight. But if I had to go through those weeks of anxiety agairj, and if I knew that in the end he would be even more teri ribly maimed, I would not have peace . yet—and I know be would not.” “My lover,” said the Engaged Girl, “ was once reported missing for a month and I thought him dead. But I too would go through that ghastly time again—I would even,” her voice dropped, “ choose that the report should be true, and that I should never see him again, rather than have the peace the Germans want.” “ I was on the spot at the time of a Zeppelin raid,” said the Mother/* and I saw with my own eyes some results 1 of their system of frightfulness. A little child living in the next road... ] I can’t talk of it. My own children, thank God, escaped except for the I fright; but I shall never get over the awful feeliug that it might have been i one of them. And yet if I had to lose ' them in some such horrible way, if the 1 only road to ultimate victory were < through the depths of agony that Bel- : gium knew, I would still say we must 1 go on to the bitter end, for only so can we exact payment to the uttermost farthing far the crimes they have r^. om . mitted.” * * * * # “ My troubles,” aaia tlw Shabby Girl, “ seem trivial beside some others but they are very real to me. We were quite comfortably off when war 1 broke out, as we had been all my life 1 But the outbreak of war meant that," ' without quite understanding how we : suddenly found ourselves very poor. I am not strong enough for very hard j work, ana I hav6 never learnt to do ' any kind of brain work, so I have 1 taken a post as ‘useful companion, 1 which is all I seem to be fit for. My ( two brothers are in the trenches. Life j is so unlke anything we had ever known that it seems as if it must be just a nightmare and that we shall 1 presemly wake up. But if all our troubles were to be multiplied a hundredfold by the war lasting longer, none of my family would vote for this 1 peace.” a

The Grandmother took up the tale. She was a young grandmother, not muoh over 60, an ordinary, intelligent, experienced, elderly English lady. “ During all the later years of my life,” she said, ‘‘there br.s been a Bhadow that recnried from time to time and made me, in c.-mmon with my fellow-countryunen, troubled end anxious.. It was that indefinite tdiug that was best expressed as * tbe German menace.’ I have traveled in Germany, and the attitude ot tbe people always filled me with misgiving. Of course there were innumerable exceptions, but tbe majority of them were jealous of Eoglisb people and disliked them because they did not understand them I have never forgotten being there at the time of Queeu Victoria’s death and being forced t.o recognise that the general atmosphere was one of ill-concealed rejoicing. And their women are so stupid ! There is no hope for a country when that is the cas°, whatever the men may be like. “Their marvelloas military system filled me with doubt and fear, and I need to look at my children and wonder whether the day would come when I should have to mourn my sons and 'my aons-in-law because of this so strong, so stnpid, so jealous a natioD. And the day has come. One of my sons is dead and one of my daughters is a widow, and the others may be before the end come?. And when I look at my grandchildren, orphans some of them now, I vow that they shall never, if I can do my mite to prevent it, know the agony of mind and the ghastly horrors that we have had to go through. We have suffered much, we can suffer more—a great deal more if necessary—for the children’s sake.” Thete was a silence, a longer one this time,

“Do you understand now r asked the Quiet Woman at last softly. Bnt there was no answer.