"Their Nerves Have Held"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 91, 21 March 1941, Page 4

"Their Nerves Have Held"

N a recent issue of London Calling a BBC commentator says of the women of England that "their nerves have held" throughout the period of total war. But the nerves of women always hold throughout a war or the war stops; whether it is total or partial. Nor is it at all certain that men have stronger nerves than women if by strength we mean toughness, and it would be strange if they had. Most of the risks men take women take-crosSing streets, driving cars, flying, and so on-and all women normally encounter one risk, perhaps half a dozen times over, that no man has ever faced since he became man. When we say that women’s nerves are not as strong as men’s we really mean that women are more sensitive. But this of course does not rob women of their right to the tribute the world is now paying them. Their conduct in England during the last six months has lifted them high above the reach of flattery. They have not only endured-a great but still negative virtue. They have endured cheerfully — an enormously greater achievement. The commentator we began by quoting was moved to admiration by the conduct of his secretary, who arrived, he said, day after day, immaculate in appearance, and unfalteringly cheerful in demeanour; as do tens of thousands of typists, shop-girls, factory-hands, nursemaids, in London every day. It is something to talk about, something to wonder at, something that London has never seen before. But it is something that the history of mankind should have made us expect if we could have believed in advance that such appalling tests would come. The war will not be lost by women. It may on the contrary be won by women, now that it is a total war waged not only in the highways and byways of land, sea, and air, but in bedrooms, and kitchens, and cellars, and subways. For victory will be with the side whose women retain their courage longest and are last to lose their cheerfulness. Very few, if any, will ever fight as soldiers. Very few are fit to fight in that way. But they are fighting and will go on fighting in schools, hospitals, homes, offices, factories, and shops, fighting with their patience, their cheerfulness, their endurance, their nerves, and these will hold.