Part 12

The other night, I had rather a curious experience. They asked me if I would go down to a big shell factory, almost entirely manned by women, and speak to the squad on the night shift. I ought to explain a little about the women working in Munitions.

They are not ordinary factory hands nor even all working girls.

When the urgent call went out that thousands of women were needed to make the implements of war and stand as a rampart behind the fighting men, the response came from all classes.

I know hundreds of women who formerly only knew work as something they paid other people to do, who are now cheerfully standing on their feet twelve hours a day with intervals for meals; living side by side in horrid little communal villages with girls from the East End and the slums, and who give all they earn to the war funds.

Further, they are happier than they have ever been in their lives. They have found the key to one of the finest paradises available to humanity, and are proving work to be a panacea for almost every sorrow. I don't think they are going to lose that key any more.

But though it is all very fine, the first time I was in real big munition works and saw these heads--some of them such pretty heads--bent over the machines, I rebelled, just as I sometimes rebel over Effie's youth being spent in the drudgery of the French war zone.

For we are only young once, and for youth there is no substitute. You have to grip yourself hard sometimes when you are overwhelmed by the sight of womanhood dedicated to the work of destruction and ask what it all means. God made us creators, builders, conservers, and the waste and cruelty of war is opposed to the very basic principles of our being. Then why?

Just because there is one thing worse than war, a dishonourable peace based on selfishness, and love of ease, and shirking of responsibility.

I had the same feeling always when I had to stand up in the huts in France before the units of the First Hundred Thousand and it was only by gripping myself tight and holding on to the great ideals they stood for, that I had the courage to say anything to them at all.

The spirit is fine among the women munitioners but sometimes they get tired and discouraged and long for the old sweet peace of home, and the cheerful comradeship of the fireside. It is then that the welfare superintendents, watching with unsleeping vigilance, call to the helpers outside to come and do their bit. I was to speak to them at the lunch hour, half past two in the morning, just to remind them that they are in the trenches too and that they must stand solid and unflinching behind the men who are laying down their lives for us.

I was walking to and fro on the great floor of the factory and had just paused to ask a rather white, sad-faced girl what was worrying her, when suddenly the lights went out. We knew what that meant, all of us, and it really was one of the most awful moments I have ever experienced. As we listened through a silence that could be felt, the machinery having stopped as if by magic, we could hear the sinister grinding of the Zeppelin engine overhead. We all knew that if a bomb crashed through the frail roof very few of the four thousand would see another dawn.

Presently nerves began to break a little; a sob sounded here and there, and once there was a little scream. Then some angel in a far corner, guided from above, no doubt, began to sing low and softly, "Jesus lover of my soul."

I have heard many lovely heart-breaking things, Cornelia, but never anything that thrilled like that. It reminded me a little of your Jubilee singers who came over with Moody, the Evangelist, so long ago from your country. When they sang "Steal away to Jesus," it had the same grip and thrill as it came stealing across the vast arena, taken up by almost every voice. The effect was instantaneous; it fell like Balm of Gilead on our terrified hearts.

We suddenly felt that God was over all, and that unless He permitted, nothing could happen. Nothing did happen. After a time the menace passed, lights went up again and work was quite quickly and cheerfully resumed. We did not speak about it at all afterwards. It is just part of the day's work.

I saw something quite as fine when I went to Gretna for a five-day visit to the workers there. You know Gretna Green? Every good American does. It is one of the shrines at which you worship. The sweet old world village has been swept away, or rather become quite unrecognisable. A great new city like those to which you are so accustomed "out West" has sprung up. When I saw all the signs and symbols of organised industry on a gigantic scale, I looked away across the shifting Solway sands and wondered whether the ghost of Ravenswood, riding to his doom, ever comes back to marvel at the thing that has happened.

Great crowds of women and girls are employed there and the welfare superintendents have their hands full. The problems and grave menace to youth segregated in such numbers far away from home influences are big enough to keep some of us awake at nights. We are fully alive to them and tackle them with all the wisdom and foresight we can muster for the gigantic task.

The spirit is fine--patriotism is a holy fire indeed which can purge the human heart clean of the dross itself.

I spoke a big incontrovertible truth in answer to a woman who was condoling rather profusely on the loss of our dear home. "You can get another house, but there is only one country."

There are several rows of danger shops at Gretna, where the most inflammable of all the high explosives is handled.

To minimise the loss in case of accident these shops have been made to accommodate only ten or twelve workers. There was an explosion when I was there, and some of the workers were killed. The girls behaved with such quiet courage and endurance that one can hardly speak about it without tears.

And every one of them insisted on being sent at once into another shop to take the same risks all over again. The true war spirit which danger and death only deepens and intensifies.

But oh, Cornelia, more and more I feel that it is all wrong.

If only all this splendid force could be dedicated to construction, instead of to destruction, why then our social vices and problems would melt like mist before the morning sun. But perhaps my vision is limited, so that I do not see far enough. Perhaps we are building better than we know in the midst of this mighty debacle.

Perhaps, who knows,--the work of national reconstruction through the discipline, the sorrow and the pain of its individual units has already begun.

*XII*

Your last letter gave me so much to think about, that I have had to put off answering it day after day. Have you observed that those who wait for the convenient season, never, somehow come up with it? The time to answer letters is when you get them, though there may be some danger lurking in that admirable habit.

For instance, if you get one which causes your dander to be "riz," it is better to wait for the cooling process. Disasters have been averted, especially in business, by the counsel of patience. How often have I had to get surreptitious hold of letters written by Himself and keep them over till he said, "I wish I hadn't sent that. Why did you let me?" Then I produce it and all is well. But sometimes I have been too late, or he wouldn't let me intervene.

Then sometimes it was the right thing for the bomb to be thrown.