Heart's Kindred

“I must get a dog,” he thought. “I’d ought to have a dog.”

At last he went away, down toward the town. And as he went, darkness seemed to close in and press about him. His hands were empty. His life was something other than that which he had believed it to be. Where was all this that he had had…

IX

As he turned into a wider street, he became aware that he was following with many who went one way. He kept on with them, intent on nothing. On Pennsylvania Avenue the crowd was going east, and he went east. But of all this he thought little, until he came near the Capitol. There the people swung both east and west, and rounded the building. So he came out in the Square before the east entrance.

The Square was filled with women. There were some men, too, but women were dominant in the throng. He remembered the meeting to which the papers had vaguely referred and because he had nothing to do, he moved on with the rest to the doors.

He noted that the women were saying little. It was almost a silent throng, as if all were immeasurably absorbed in something. Oddly, he thought of Mrs. Folts, and her absorption in food for her family and her guests.

He was in time to find room on the steps and then within the rotunda. He stared about him. This looked different from all other buildings that he had seen – as if great things were due to happen here. He pressed on slowly, as the others pressed. Eventually the elevators received them, and he found himself in an enormous room, the seats of the floor already filled, the galleries fast filling. He stood against the wall and looked. Below and above a throng of women, and only here and there a man. It occurred to him at last that he did not belong here, but now he could not well retreat, for the crowd blocked the doors.

On the platform were a dozen women. He looked at them curiously. He was familiar with but one sort of woman who was willing to show herself before a crowd. There flashed to his mind the memory of the dozen women whom he had seen on the stage of the Mission Saloon in Inch, on what was to have been Bunchy’s wedding night. Dress them like this, he reflected – dark and plain – and they wouldn’t look so different, at this distance.

The silence disturbed him. What on earth made them so still – as if it were a matter of life and death, whatever they were meeting about. He waited in absorbing curiosity to hear what it was they were going to say.

“Somebody says the Senate’s full, too,” he heard a man tell some one. “And they’re going to speak in the rotunda and on the steps.”

The Inger turned to him.

“What’s this room?” he asked.

“This is the House,” the man replied, courteously.

The Inger looked with new eyes. The House … where his laws were made. He felt a sudden surprised sense of pride in the room.

The silence became a hush, contagious, electric, and he saw that a woman on the platform had risen. She stood hatless, her hair brushed smoothly back, and her hands behind her. Abruptly he liked her. And he wondered what his mother had looked like.

There was no applause, but to his amazement the whole audience rose, and stood for a moment, in absolute silence. This woman spoke simply, and as if she were talking to each one there. It astonished the man. He had heard no one address a meeting save in campaign speeches, and this was not like those.

“The fine moral reaction,” she said, “has at last come. It has come in a remorse too tardy to reclaim all the human life that has been spent. It has come in a remorse too tardy to reclaim the treasure that has been wasted. But it comes too with a sense of joy that all voluntary destruction of human life, all the deliberate wasting of the fruits of labor, will soon have become things of the past. Whatever the future holds for us, it will at least be free from war.”[1 - Jane Addams: “Newer Ideals of Peace.”]

Of this the Inger understood nothing. What could she be talking about, when the United States was to go to war at once?

“… it is because women understand that this is so, that we have been able so to come together. Not a month ago the word went out. Yet every state in the United States is represented here in Washington to-day by from one to five hundred women. And no one has talked about it. No one has wondered or speculated. We are here because the time has come.”

And now the Inger thought he understood. They were here to help! The time had come – war was here – they had come here to be ready, to collect supplies, to make bandages…

“… seven women from seven of the warring nations of Europe,” the quiet voice went on, “and women of the other states of Europe answered our appeal, and they are here. They will speak to us to-night – and they are to go from state to state, helping all women to understand.”

Women from the warring nations! The Inger looked eagerly. They had been there, they had seen, they had cheered their husbands and sons. Some of them must have lost their men – of course they could tell the American women what to do.

The first woman, however, was not of a warring country. She was a woman of Denmark. And she was of the same quiet manner and conversational speech.

She said: “During the first day of the war an old man said to me, sad and indignant: ‘To me it is quite unintelligible that citizens of the twentieth century consent to be driven like sheep to the shambles.’ And truly, only a fraction of those involved in the war did intend the war. To them and to us it was a surprise that will repeat itself in history as long as war is declared without the consent of the people, as long as war depends on secret notes and treaties.

“Where can we find a way to prevent another happening of these terrors? Can women possibly have any chance of succeeding where men have recently failed so miserably?

“I came from Denmark to say to you that women have better opportunities than anybody else for creating public opinion – the opinion that grows stronger with the coming race. Women give the next generation its first impressions.

“And the mother must give her children another idea than the armed warrior. Let her show them how unworthy it is of the citizen of the twentieth century to be used, body and blood, without will or resistance, as food for cannon…”[2 - From Johanne Rambusch, Aalborg, Denmark.]

The Inger listened, stupefied. What was this woman saying? It sounded to him like treason for which they should fall on her and drive her from the hall.

Then he heard the country of the next woman who came forward. Germany! Now they would hear the truth. Here was a woman from a nation of soldiers. She would understand, and she would make the rest know in what lay a country’s glory. Moreover, she was a strong woman – a woman to whom that race of mothers and of soldiers might have looked as the mother of them all.

“Women of the World, when will your call ring out?

“Women of all the belligerent states, with head high and courageous heart, gave their husbands to protect the fatherland. Mothers and maidens unfalteringly saw their sons and sweethearts go forth to death and destruction.”

This was it! The Inger drew his breath deep. She knew – she knew… She wanted American women to feel the same.

“Millions of men have been left on the battlefield. They will never see home again. Others have returned, broken and sick in body and soul. Towns of the highest civilization, homes of simple human happiness, are destroyed. Europe’s soil reeks of human blood. The flesh and blood of men will fertilize the soil of the corn fields of the future on German, French, Belgian and Russian ground.

“Millions of women’s hearts blaze up in anguish. No human speech is rich enough to express such depths of suffering. Shall this war of extermination go on? Shall we sit and wait dumbly for other wars to come upon us?

“Women of the world, where is your voice?

“Are you only great in patience and suffering?

“The earth soaked in blood, millions of wrecked bodies of husbands, sweethearts, sons – outrages inflicted on your sex. Can these things not rouse you to blazing protest?

“Women of the world, where is your voice, that should be sowing seeds of peace? Do not let yourselves be deterred by those who accuse you of weakness because you wish for peace, who say you cannot hold back the bloody march of history by your protest.

“Protest with all your might … make preparation for peace … perform your duty as wives and mothers, as protectors of true civilization and humanity!”[3 - From Lida Gustava Heymann, Munich.]

Still in that silence, she ceased – but now once more all over the hall, the women rose, and stood there for a moment, looking into the eyes of the woman of Germany. There was no handclapping, there was no word, there was only that single sign – as if in that room there were but one Person, and that Person answered like this to what she said.

The Inger stared about him. What did this mean? Were these a few traitors who had come here to teach American women to play traitor too —

The German woman was speaking again.

“A letter,” she said, “a letter from German and Austrian women, ‘to the women of England – and of the world.’”

She read: “Women, creators and guardians of life, must loathe war, which destroys life. Through the smoke of battle and thunder of cannon of hostile peoples, through death, terror, destruction and unending pain and anxiety, there glows like the dawn of a coming better day the deep community of feeling of many women of all nations.”[4 - From “Letters from the Women of the Warring Nations.”]

“This is signed,” she said, “by one hundred and fifty German and Austrian women. Thousands more are with us in name and spirit. Do not doubt – doubt!”

Another woman rose, and then another:

A letter from the women of England —

“… Is it not our mission to preserve life? Do not humanity and common sense alike prompt us to join hands with the women of neutral countries, and urge the stay of further bloodshed – forever?.. There is but one way to do this … by Wisdom and Reason. Can they begin too soon?.. Already we seem to hear

‘A hundred nations swear that there shall be
Pity and Peace and Love among the good and free.’”[5 - From “Letters from the Women of the Warring Nations.”]