Читать книгу A Woman and the War - Frances Evelyn Maynard Greville Countess of Warwick - Страница 7

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The problem that faces a State when it sends its best and most virile men to kill and to be killed has certain aspects that few have the courage to handle. For long years, while Europe was an armed camp, the claims of love were admitted amid the demands of war, but now that the dreaded era—which each nation was hurrying through the medium of extravagant armaments and secret diplomacy—has come upon us, we are without a definite plan for securing the continuity of the best elements in the race. If I thought that this appalling war were no more than the prelude to others, I would pray that every woman might be sterile, but hope, our last and eternal refuge against the ills of life, suggests that this most terrible cataclysm will strengthen the hands of democracy and give it the strength to resist further sacrifices in years to come. While the grass grows the horse starves, and while we think of the generation to come, thousands, hundreds of thousands of Europe's best and bravest lie in their hasty graves, and the cry of Mother Earth is still "they come." What has been done by our rulers to see that the fittest shall leave behind them some to take a share of the white man's burden?

Very little. The men of the middle and upper classes who happened to be engaged have in very many cases been wise and patriotic enough to marry, and their wives have proved themselves as full of courage as of love. In order to marry, men have often been obliged to pay the Church an absurd tax, for the Church has shown itself quite inadequate to the occasion, and trumpery restrictions, meaningless in times of peace and a scandal in time of war, have not been relaxed. The poor man cannot afford a special license, and in many instances has married without the aid or sanction of the Church. As we know, the State decided to recognise the unmarried wives of the nation's brave defenders, a courageous and proper step that evoked the wildest protests from the narrow-minded, the "unco guid," and the fanatics who believe that man was made for morality rather than that morality was made for man. They did not pause to reflect that our absurd and antiquated divorce laws are the chief cause of illicit unions, and that divorce is hardly less hard for the poor to obtain than are decent housing, warm clothing, and nourishing food. Happily, in making this concession to the men who are offering their lives to their country, the genius of red tape contrived to assert itself. Hard though it may be to realise, it was for some time a fact that, if a man home on leave married his unmarried wife in order that his children might bear his name, his wife's allowance ceased because he came under the head of those who married after enlisting! The very quintessence of stupidity could have achieved nothing finer.

Unfortunately the majority of those at the front are unmarried. It was considered sufficient to find them physically sound, to vaccinate and inoculate them and then to send them to take their chance. The question of the years to come was never considered. There is no department of War Office or Admiralty that embraces eugenics. I have looked in vain through the speeches of statesmen for a single recommendation to our defenders to marry and leave behind them some pledge of their affection, some asset for the real national treasury that does not consist of gold, as is popularly supposed, but of vigorous men and women as anxious to live for their country as they are willing to die for it. To be sure every wife would have cost the country three pounds a month for the term of the war, and this thought may have given our prudent legislators pause; but I venture to suggest that a wife as a national asset is cheap, even at that price.

The balance has been redressed to some extent, in fashion at once inevitable and unsatisfactory. The billeting of great masses of virile young men in various centres throughout the country, and the opportunities that the new life has afforded resulted in an increase in the number of illegitimate births. I have heard of this from many quarters, and have every reason to believe, in spite of denials, that no district in which large numbers of soldiers have been gathered together will prove an exception to the general rule. Whatever the moral aspect of the question, it cannot be overlooked or ignored. I deplore the promiscuity, though I believe that a wise and daring statesmanship, ready to meet new conditions with new remedies, would have avoided it; but I would like to plead for the foolish mothers, often little more than girls, and for the babes, who in many instances will never see a father's face.

I am not urging humanity in place of morality, for most people lack the moral courage to listen to such a plea; it is rather in the interests of the State that I urge the proper, and even generous, treatment of all those who, before this year is ended, will have entered the world unwanted and unwelcomed. They will be the children of men in the first flush of manhood, of men not lacking in courage and character (or they would not have joined the colours), of men whose fault was that they could not resist temptation in its least resistible form. We must think of the psychology of the soldier who knows that in a few short weeks he may be among the nameless dead, who has embarked upon the greatest of all adventures, and says, "Let me rejoice and be merry, for to-morrow I die." Doubtless in many cases he will return and marry the mother of his child if fate permits, often he will not return, and a soldier's death may well clear a soldier's name.

It should not outrage morality to see that the children, whether they be many or few, born of men gone to the front should be looked after by the State where the mother is unable adequately to provide for them, and it should be possible, too, in cases where the father returns and marries the mother of his child, that such marriage should make the offspring legitimate. It is not a large concession; in many European countries, France included, marriage atones for previous indiscretions, and if this were so in England there would be a much greater tendency to regularise irregular unions for the children's sake. If nothing is done hundreds of young mothers who succumbed to exceptional temptation will be outcasts. Under the most favourable normal conditions, the lot of the little one will be hard. When this hideous war is over, I would like the regimental officers to put the facts fairly and squarely to their men, to ask them to remember the girls they left behind them, and to be able to assure them, in the name of the Government, that if they would, on their return, marry the mother of their child, that child would become ipso facto legitimate.

I am quite sure that many excellent people will find this plea immoral, that they will say it is condoning irregular sex union, that it is removing the burden from those who have transgressed. I deny these suggestions even before they are made. To my mind there is more immorality, more glaring offence to the Creator in one battlefield full of dead and mangled humanity, than in all the illegitimate children who will have come crying into our tear-stricken world before the war draws to its end. Those who rule over Europe and, being unable to settle their differences, sent millions of men, who have no quarrel, to deface the earth and slaughter one another, are morally responsible for every change in the normal life of mankind. Those who replenish the earth are better than those who destroy it.

War is a monstrous immorality that seeks to destroy the world; the illicit unions, to which I refer in the interest of those who pay the penalty—the mother and the child—are a minor immorality from which, with a little care, a little loving-kindness, and a little fore-knowledge, much good, much deep morality may spring.

There is not much time to lose; there will be much opposition to overcome, and the work of helping the helpless will be widely condemned by those who, having no feelings, are always able to control them. But the effort is worth making, and so I plead here, first, for ample facilities for those who wish to marry before they go abroad; secondly, for the legitimation of the children whose fathers, now at the war, come back and marry the mothers, and, lastly, for some special care of the mother and children themselves.