Part 15

But we must leave it, leave it all and just hold blindly on. It has gotten clear beyond us. It is so big and awful, we can just not grasp it at all.

I am now a little like a Jack of all trades, master of none. Food is beginning to be spelled with a very large capital and they tell me I must talk about food. I went to Scotland for that purpose and to speak at a great meeting in Glasgow Cathedral to commemorate on the 4th of August those who had fallen in the war.

It is the first time a woman has ever lifted up her voice in the Cathedral, and the occasion caused some searching of heart. The noble edifice was absolutely packed and directly I got up, standing at a specially selected spot in the Nave, I forgot everything but the faces in front, the great sorrowing heart of my own country and its bitter need. She is a very little country, but none have more nobly done their bit. Do you know, Cornelia, that there are villages in the north and west of Scotland where the young men are all wiped out--where there is no link between one generation and another except the babies in arms. There are no sons left, no husbands for the girls. It was with these things my heart broke as I tried to speak.

Nowhere is there any grudging or holding back. At the overflow meeting that had to be held in an adjoining church a woman came up at the close, a little plain country woman in mourning with a bag on her arm. From it she took three photographs of soldiers in Highland dress and a war office telegram which she laid against one of the lads. "That came yesterday," she said. "It's Jamie--he's the last----"

All gone and she a widow. What is one to say to a woe like that? Where is compensation to be found? There will have to be something very satisfying over there beside the river of God to make up for the roll of the whelming billows here.

I went on from Glasgow to Dundee to speak to two thousand women about the necessity for saving food. The situation is becoming acute and it has to be explained to the people. I have come to the conclusion that food is the supreme test. They'll give almost anything more cheerfully, go into small houses, wear old clothes, economise anywhere but on what is vulgarly called their "inwards."

Then you see our industrial population was never better off. In the shipbuilding districts, the munition areas--the great textile neighbourhoods, they are simply piling it up. Of course they want all the things money can buy. I am sure I should, if I had been cheated out of them for a whole section of my life.

So you can't blame these people for buying salmon at four shillings per pound, the best beefsteaks and prime cuts from the joints, when they can get them. But the trouble is they can't now get them, so there is grumbling and unrest. They have got it into their heads that the government is hoarding the stuff and that favour is being shown. So labour has said that it will go short if capital goes short with them.

It is a perfectly reasonable proposition and the sooner the card ration scheme comes into operation, the better. It will not solve the whole problem, of course, nor yet increase incredulously or automatically the available stores. What it will do is to ensure equal distribution.

I, for one, hope Lord Rhondda won't lose any more time. I am afraid my letters are getting less and less interesting.

What you asked for was a plain, unvarnished record of war conditions here, which you want to keep, and I am setting them down as simply and faithfully as I know how. We are getting bit by bit down to the sordid bedrock where we are face to face with the hideous nakedness of war. There are things that the glow and glory of our Pentecostal sacrifice can hardly illumine.

In my deep heart I feel that we are coming to them soon, and that we shall need more different kinds of courage than at any time during those searching, aging, interminable years.

I got back to find that the war office has commandeered our "substitute" for active service. There is no one else to be got, so the door will have to be shut. It means that our living is all gone except what Cook calls "the Capting's pay." Cook himself is working at munitions now after having successfully planted the potato patch. So there is only Florence and me left, and we don't eat much.

Life truly is shorn for me of much of its dignity, and the amazing thing is that one doesn't mind--we are not our own any more, but bought with a price.

A woman condoled with me not long ago over the house being destroyed. All I could think of was to say as cheerfully as possible, "You can get another house, but there is only one country." I must just keep on saying it to myself over and over, but sometimes when there is nobody looking, I am afraid I don't hold my diminished head so high.

*XIV*

Food is the question of the hour. The people who have read with uncomprehending eyes the imploring official appeals "Eat less bread," "Save the Wheat," "Food will win the War," are now face to face with real shortage. The psychology of this war, in so far as it operates in human consciousness, is a very remarkable thing. I had to sit down to think it over this morning after a very exhausting argument with a food waster and hoarder. These two words don't sort together, do they, but they are apt to the hour. He or she who hoards food at this moment of national stress, wastes it, because he is preserving it for his own wretched body, which is of no value to his country. A few minutes' silent contemplation brought me into a clearer light. The absolute refusal of those people to admit the need for conservation and self-denial, is a form of national pride. They simply can't admit the humiliating fact that Great Britain, proud mistress of the seas, is no longer self-supporting or sufficient to her own needs. They never knew, of course, that in our most prosperous years we could produce only forty per cent. of what we consumed. And if they had known it, would it have made any difference? It is all so very English, so dogged, so unchanged and unchangeable.

But even this partially comforting reflection, that the grumblers and obstructionists are really patriots in disguise doesn't ease the situation or fill the empty store cupboards.

And I am in it now, Cornelia, up to the neck in it. Having filled many roles, I have now become a food expert, from whose lips calories and proteids and other heathen words ought to flow glibly. Only they don't. I am a plain woman and most people are plain in the same sense. They hate camouflage; it worries and wearies them. I am trying to tell as simply as I can, how they may make up with other things, for the things that are not there.

It does not read very clearly or convincingly, does it? But that is my job.

It is not easy. Food is not an inspiring theme. You cannot wax eloquent over it; the only dramatic moments are those when you flame red with indignation over the breaking down of the voluntary system. It has failed all along the line, and card rationing is bound to come. There have been several distressing instances from sources where we had every reason to look for better things--ay, even for leadership in high ethics. But alas! the temptation to be secure against more troublous times was too great for resistance. All this causes a searching of heart lest there should be very weak points left in my armour. I am determined that in this particular respect I shall do rather more than my share. I am kept up to high-water-mark by Florence. She really ought to have a medal for allegiance to the Government under the most trying conditions. She has weighed everything, done all the things I might not have done, stood firm between me and every temptation.

If food doesn't actually win the war, at least its shortage is searching the hearts and trying the reins of the children of men.

All the time wrestling with those sordid details, trying to interest people in oatmeal and bones, and the superiority of casserole cooking over the waste of roast and frying, I have to keep thinking of the glory and travail which is bound up in it all. If you haven't something to illumine with, if only a farthing dip, you just can't go on.

Although some people have complimented me on my housekeeping, a lot of it doesn't really interest me much. It is no credit to me that I happened to be born determined to do my job well. Even in the great old dinner-giving days, long before the deluge, when we vied with one another in frantic endeavours to discover something entirely new, with which to decorate our menu cards, and fill other women with hopeless envy, the game never seemed worth the candle. After all, it takes very little to keep us alive.

The things that interested me most in those great dinner contests was the eager look in the eyes of the women as they sampled the unknown and sometimes fearsome looking dish.

The men usually showed their discrimination by leaving the entrees severely alone.

Where in Heaven's name am I wandering to? We housekeepers have at last got something really testing to whet our axes upon. We have got to invent and concoct appetising dishes minus most of the ingredients we once thought necessary to them.

This is going to be the testing fight. I am learning great new lessons every day. I only wish I could pass them on. A woman came up to me in the street the other day and said: "Please, I've tried to do what you said wi' them substitoots (oh, the scorn in her voice!). But 'Arry, 'e won't look at 'em. Calls 'em messes, 'e does; wants 'is 'onest beefsteak, 'e does, an' I don't blime 'im, either."