Читать книгу The Flaming Sword in Serbia and Elsewhere - M. A. Stobart - Страница 5

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To go through the horrors of war, and keep one's reason—that is hell. Those who have seen the fiery Moloch, licking up his human sacrifices, will harbour no illusions; they will know that the devouring deity of War is an idol, and no true God. The vision is salutary; it purges the mind from false values, and gives courage for the exorcism of abominations still practised by a world which has no knowledge of the God of Life. The abominations which are now practised in Europe, by twentieth century man, are no less abominable than those practised of old in the Valley of Hinnom. The heathen passed their sons and daughters through the fire, to propitiate their deity; the Lord God condemned the practice. We Christians pass our sons and daughters through the fire of bloody wars, to propitiate our deities of patriotism and nationalism. Would the Lord God not also condemn our practice? But we, alas! have no Josiah to act for the Lord God (2 Kings xxiii.). The heathen wept at the destruction of Baal, but the worship of the pure God prevailed. No one believes that his god is false, till it has been destroyed. Therefore, we must destroy militarism, in and through this war, and future generations will justify the deed.

I am neither a doctor nor a nurse, but I have occupied myself within the sphere of war for the following reasons.

After four years spent on the free veldt of the South African Transvaal, I returned to London (in 1907) with my mind cleared of many prejudices. The political situation into which I found myself plunged, was interesting. Both men and women were yawning themselves awake; the former after a long sleep, the latter for the first time in history. The men had been awakened by the premonitory echo of German cannons, and were, in lounge suits, beginning to look to their national defences. Women probably did not know what awakened them, but the same cannons were responsible.

For self-defence is the first law of sub-conscious nature; and the success of Prussian cannons would mean the annihilation of woman as the custodian of human life.

It was natural that woman's first cry should be for the political vote: influence without power is a chimera. But it was also natural that at a moment when national defence was the rallying shibboleth for men, the political claims of women should be by men disregarded. Political power without national responsibility would be unwisdom and injustice.

But was woman incapable of taking a responsible share in national defence?

I believed that prejudice alone stood in woman's way. Prejudice, however, is not eliminated by calling it prejudice. Practical demonstration that prejudice is prejudice, will alone dissipate the phantom.

But what form should woman's share in national defence assume? In these days of the supremacy of mechanical over physical force, woman's ability as a fighting factor could have been shown. But there were three reasons against experimenting in this direction.

Firstly, it would have been difficult to obtain opportunities for the necessary proof of capacity.

Secondly, woman could not fight better than man, even if she could fight as well, and, as an argument for the desirability of giving woman a share in national responsibility, it would be unwise to present her as a performer of less capacity than man. The expediency of woman's participation in national defence could best be proved by showing that there was a sphere of work in which she could be at least as capable as man.

Thirdly, and of primary importance, if the entrance of women into the political arena is an evolutionary movement—forwards and not backwards—woman must not encumber herself with legacies of male traditions likely to compromise her freedom of evolvement along the line of life.

If the Woman's Movement has, as I believe, value in the scheme of creation, it must tend to the furtherance of life, and not of death.

Now, militarism means supremacy of the principle that to produce death is, on occasions—many occasions—more useful than to preserve life. Militarism has, in one country at least, reached a climax, and I believe it is because we women feel in our souls that life has a meaning, and a value, which are in danger of being lost in militarism, that we are at this moment instinctively asking for a share in controlling those human lives for which Nature has made us specially responsible. "Intellect," says Bergson, "is characterised by a natural inability to comprehend life." Woman may be less heavily handicapped in an attempt to understand it?

It may well have been the echo of German cannons which aroused woman to self-consciousness.

Demonstration, therefore, of the capacity of woman to take a useful share in national defence must be given in a sphere of work in which preservation, and not destruction of life, is the objective. Such work was the care of the sick and wounded.

In a former book, War and Women, an account has been given of the founding of the "Women's Convoy Corps," as the practical result of these ideas. The work which was accomplished by members of this Corps, in Bulgaria, during the first Balkan War, 1912-13, afforded the first demonstration of the principle that women could efficiently work in hospitals of war, not only as nurses—that had already been proved in the Crimean War—but as doctors, orderlies, administrators, in every department of responsibility, and thus set men free for the fighting line.

I had hoped that, as far as I was concerned, it would never be necessary again to undertake a form of work which is to me distasteful. But when the German War broke out in August, 1914, I found to my disappointment, that the demonstration of 1912-13 needed corroboration. For I had one day the privilege of a conversation with an important official of the British Red Cross Society, and, to my surprise, he repeated the stale old story that women surgeons were not strong enough to operate in hospitals of war, and that women could not endure the hardships and privations incidental to campaigns.

I reminded him of the women at Kirk Kilisse. "Ah!" he replied, "that was exceptional." I saw at once that he, and those of whom he was representative, must be shown that it was not exceptional. But where there is no will to be convinced, the only convincing argument is the deed. Action is a universal language which all can understand.

I must, therefore, once more enter the arena; for my previous experience of war had corroborated my belief that the co-operation of woman in warfare, is essential for the future abolition of war; essential, that is, for the retrieval of civilisation. For these reasons I must not shirk.