Heart's Kindred

Then a letter from the women of Belgium, from the women of Switzerland, from the women of Italy – five hundred, two thousand names to each.

At length the Inger understood. These women who were here to protest against war were speaking for thousands upon thousands of women all over the world. And here were thousands listening, in the nation’s capitol.

A little French woman spoke, each sentence translated by another woman.

“The humblest cry can sometimes be heard joined to many others… It is very well for gentlemen banqueting at Guildhall to rejoice at being able to assemble so comfortably during the greatest war in history, thanks to the valor of the British army which defends the coast; but they should think of those who are exposing their lives…

“My two sons are in the trenches since the end of September, and have never slept in a bed since. It would be nothing if the cold had not set in so dreadfully…”[6 - Cotes du Nord, France.]

Something – no one could have told whether it was a breath, or a look from one to one, went over the hall. More than in a long account of horror, this French mother, who spoke no other tongue, had made them feel what she was feeling.

There was a Polish woman of the country about Cracow who told the story of what had happened to her village. She spoke slowly, through an interpreter, and almost without emotion.

“We had just three little streets,” she said, “so it was not much to take. But they took them…” And she told how, and how a hundred children in the village had died. “I should be less than a woman in courage if I did not say that I, for one, shall not be silent even one day until my death. Every day I shall be crying, ‘Women of the World. This can not happen again, if we are women of flesh and not of stone.’”

There was a woman of Servia, and she was a peasant woman. Her clothes were those which her neighbors had found for her. Even then, so great was the haste at the last, she had crossed the ocean in a skirt and a shawl, but with no waist beneath the shawl.

“I had to come,” she said, through her interpreter. “There is only one hell worse than the hell that we have been through: and that is not to cry to the last breath that it shall be stopped. That it shall not come again to other women like us…”

There was a woman of Belgium, who belonged to a family high in position in Louvain. She wore garments which had been given to her from the American boxes. It was strange to hear that soft voice, in its broken English, speak of a thousand horrors with no passion. But when she spoke of To-morrow, and of what it must bring, her voice throbbed and strove with the spirit which poured through her.

“Do not think of Louvain,” she said. “Do not think of Belgium. Say, if you like, that this was only a part of what happens in war. Think, then, only of war. Think that war must not be ever again in this our world. While women have voices to raise to other women, we must make them understand that peace is our contribution to the earth. Women of the world, what are we waiting for?”

Then there came a woman, young, erect, burning – a woman of Hungary.

“Listen,” she said. “A Hungarian girl who went to care for the Galician refugees tells me in a recent letter the story of a poor woman who said: ‘I wanted to protect my children. I ran with the other inhabitants of the village. I took my baby in a shawl on my back. The two others hung on to my skirts. I ran fast, as fast as I could. When I got to the station, I had the two children hanging on my skirts, I had the shawl on my back, but I had no baby and I don’t know where I dropped him.’”

The Hungarian woman went on:

“They don’t want us to find out that there is no glory, no big patriotism, no love for anything noble, nothing but butchery and slaughter and rape. War means that. You know the story of the War-brides. You know how agents of the different churches compete with military rulers in glorifying this kind of prostitution. But do you know of the concentration camps with the compulsory service of women? You may have seen the full reports of the atrocities committed on Belgian women – but you didn’t get the other reports about the same kind of atrocities committed by all armies on female human beings between the ages of five and eighty-nine in all the countries where the game of war is being played. Women of the world, what are we waiting for?”[7 - From Rosika Schwimmer, Buda Pesth.]

And beside her, as she finished, stood an Irish woman, taking up the thread of the Hungarian’s woman’s cry:

“If we women, to whom even a partial knowledge of these happenings has come, remain silent now, then we are blood guilty. We are more than blood guilty, for we must be numbered with those who will even dare the murder of a soul.

“Let us not blind ourselves with talk of the glories and heroisms of war. We dare not ignore the moral and spiritual wreckage that remains unchronicled. We have to think of men brutalized and driven to hideous deeds by their experiences; of men with reason destroyed; of men disgraced for lack of the cold courage that can face such horrors; of men with a slain faith in good, their outlook on life eternally embittered. What of the women for whom the French government has had to devise legislation to deter them from infanticide? What of the children begotten under such conditions? Women of the world, where is your voice, that should be sowing the seeds of peace?”[8 - From Louie Bennett, Dublin.]

Almost as her own voice, went on the voice of another woman, the brief poignant entreaty of an English woman:

“We ask nothing strange! Only that which Christianity, civilization and motherhood dictate.

“The well-being of children touches all. On that common ground the opposing nations could meet and crown their courage by laying aside their arms at the call of a higher humanity.

“Can mother hearts turn from this cry? Will not womanhood join in resolve, though in divers tongues, yet with but one Voice – the Voice of pure human love and pity…”[9 - From Emily Hobhouse, London.]

The Inger stood against the wall, and listened. A place had opened into which he had never looked, whose existence he had never guessed. He stood frowning, staring – at first trying to understand, then understanding and passionately doubting. The appeals of the first speakers did not touch him. What did women know of these things?

Then the Polish woman had spoken. Then the Servian woman. Then the Belgium woman. These undeniably knew what they were talking about! But not until that woman of Hungary had stood there, did the thought come which had pierced him: What if all that she said was true – and was true of Lory? What if it had been her child whom Lory had lost from her shawl as she ran…

He breathed hard, and looked about him. They were all, men and women alike, sitting as tense as he. And he saw that all these believed. No one, no one could doubt these women.

“This is what we have to do – ” it was another German woman who was speaking and the interpreter was giving her words. “This is what we have to do: our cry must ring forth irresistibly from millions of voices: ‘Enough of slaughter, enough of devastation. Peace, lasting peace! Make room for peaceful work. Leave the way free for the fraternity of the peoples and for their coöperation in bringing to flower the culture of international civilization!’

“If men kill, it is for women to fight for the preservation of life. If men are silent, it is our duty to raise our voices on behalf of our ideals.”[10 - From Clara Zetkin, Stuttgart.]

The Inger stood where the wall curved, so he was looking at the rows of faces from near the front of the room. And he was looking on a sign, a hint no greater in emphasis than a shadow, of what war is to women. He understood it, momentarily he even felt it. And for a flash he saw them all as he had seen the women in the Chicago employment agency – as if he were those women and could suffer what they suffered.

He remembered Lory, and her face lifted to his in the Chicago meeting.

“They’re voting to kill folks,” she had said. “Oh, my God.”

This was what she had meant. She had understood, and he had not understood. How had she understood? He thought about her. Out of Inch, out of scenes of killing, and of misery put upon life, Jem Moor’s girl had come, and she knew how to feel the way these women felt. All that he had been feeling for her became something which beat upon his heart like light.

A note had been sent to the chairman, and with her announcement, a movement of wonder went over the audience, and this wonder was touched with dread. A famous army man was present, and he would speak.

He came forward firmly, and it was by the merest chance that he stood there before them erect, strong, compact, alive, for he had seen service. The Inger looked at him, quickening. Immediately, at the sight of his uniform, the Inger had felt a restoration of confidence in what had always been. Then the man faced them, and he spoke as quietly as the women themselves:

“I ask only to tell you,” he said, “that I have been for twenty-five years in the service – a part of the time in active service. I have believed in armies and in armament. I still believe them to have been an obvious necessity – while our world was being whipped into shape. Now I am in the last years of my service – I do not take very readily to new ideas – even when I know that these point to the next step on the way. I tell you frankly, that if there were a call to arms, I should be there in my old place – I should serve as I have always served, I should kill whom they told me to kill, as long as they would have me there. But – ” he hesitated, and lifted his face, and in it was a light that has shone on a face in no battlefield, “if that time comes, I shall thank God for every woman who protests against it, as you here are protesting. And, if that time comes, from my soul I shall honor the men who will have the courage to be shot, rather than to go out to shoot their fellows. These men will not be lacking: I have read the signs and I have heard men talk. Your new way of warfare is not in vain. You will win. You are the voice of To-morrow. I have wanted you to know that I feel this – and that to you and to your effort I say God bless you, and prosper what you do.”

For the first time that night the silence of the audience was broken. A thunder of hands and voices spoke to him. And, as he turned to leave the platform, they did that by which they paid the highest honor that they knew – and rose and remained standing until he had reached his seat.

“Jove,” said the man near the Inger. “Old Battle-axe! Now watch the men catch up. It only needed one full-blooded man to say it…”

“Rot,” said the man beyond him. “No matter what they say, you know and I know that trade will never get out of the way of peace. There’ll be no peace while we have trade – and that’ll be for some time to come!”

At this the first man laughed.

“Trade,” he said, “was a thought before it was trade. Peace is a thought – yet.”

On the stage some one was quoting Washington: “My first wish is – to see the whole world in peace and the inhabitants of it as one band of brothers, striving who should contribute most to the happiness of mankind.”

And Victor Hugo: “A day will come when a cannon ball will be exhibited in public museums, just as an instrument of torture is now; and people will be amazed that such a thing could ever have been.”

Methodically, and as if it had become their business, the women fell to discussing what they must do. In each country more groups must be organized – for School, Home, States, Municipalities – “for the lifting of the programme of pacifism into the realm of serious commercial and educational and home and political consideration.” The psychology of war must give place to the psychology of peace.

From unfair trade legislation by one country against another, down to the sale of toy weapons and soldiers; and from competing expenditures for national defence down to military drill in schools and colleges, the temptations to militarism must pass from the earth.

“We know,” an American woman said, “that war depends on economic conditions beyond our control. But we know, too, that there is something potent to change even these, and it is this potency which we dream to liberate.”

And, beside the Inger, the man said again:

“Peace is only a thought, – yet. But even economic conditions were only thought, once!”

Gradually in the voice of one and another, the word took shape – so simply that the enormity of the import was pathetically lacking: That representatives of the women of the world, united in a demand for international righteousness, shall petition the men and women of the world to turn to the new knowledge that war is an outworn way to settle difficulties; that with one voice we shall all refuse any longer to let the traditions of a past age be put upon us; that the old phrases and catch-words shall not stand for one moment before the naked question of the race: “Is this the best that life can do with life?” That we shall learn from one another that there is no such thing as preparing against war, but that to prepare for war breeds war – twin-born are the slayer and the slain; that we shall teach one another that “Thou shalt not kill” is not only moral law, but sound economic policy, for always these two are one. And that from the constructive plans devised in anguish and in hope by men and women of to-day, there be selected and inaugurated a world programme for permanent peace without armistice and a council of the nations looking toward the federation of the world.

“We have talked long enough of treaties and of arbitration,” they said. “Let us have done with such play. Let us speak the phrase quite simply: The federation of the world.”

And the message concluded: