Women of the war

Introduction

I have read this volume with an interest which 1 feel confident will be widely shared by the Englishspeaking public. Its simple and unexaggerated account of the varied fields of work which have enlisted, during the last three years, the energies and efforts of women of our race, forms a unique chapter in the annals of war.

Looked at as a whole, these narratives are as good evidence as could be found of the depth and universality of the appeal which the war has made to our women, not only for sympathy but for service. For the first time it has taught us as a nation to realise how large and how decisive is the part that can be played in a world-wide contest by those who are prevented from taking a place in the actual fighting line. There is no question here of any form of compulsion. The services and sacrifices which are described in these pages were given and suffered spontaneously by volunteers. That they should have been on such a scale, covering such wide and diverse activities, and shared in by women of every class and of so many types of special or general capacity, is a speaking tribute, not only to the quickened sense of national duty, but to the commanding and irresistible authority of a great cause.

vi WOMEN OF THE WAR

Hardly less remarkable is the testimony which this book affords to the versatility, one might say the inventiveness, displayed in the share which women have contributed to the general stock of patriotic effort. They have done and are doing things which, before the war, most of us would have said were both foreign to their nature and beyond their physical capacity. It would be invidious to discriminate, but anyone turning over these pages will find abundant illustrations. Nor can it be doubted that these experiences and achievements will, when the war is over, have a permanent effect upon both the statesman's and the economist's conception of the powers and functions of women in the reconstructed world.

But I must leave the book to speak for itself and teach its own lessons. It does not profess to be an exhaustive account of women's work in the war. It is content with the more modest task of selecting and describing some typical cases. I know the scrupulous care with which it has been prepared, and 1 heartily commend it, not only as a trustworthy and uncoloured delineation of actual fact, but as a message of stimulus and inspiration to us all.

H. H. ASQUITH.

Preface

These accounts of the work of some British women during the war have been collected, not with any attempt at even outlining the scope of women's achievement, but simply as pictures, showing the influence which women in varied spheres have exercised in the course of the war. Some of those whose records follow are women who, by force of character and personality, would always have stood apart, even in the limited opportunities of peace time. Others are taken rather as types of workers, representing many hundreds who are serving the country in similar ways. The selection has seemed at times invidious ; but it isr easy to realise that when the numbers of workers are so immense in each of the fields of activity mentioned in the book, no complete record of individual effort can be attempted.

The object in writing of the experiences of particular workers is to present a more vivid story than a merely general description could convey. True understanding of our women's war work can come only from personal experience or through the power of a keen imagination. Those who have no other opportunities can appreciate that work by visualising the measure of endurance, patience, determination, and unflinching courage demanded for the successful viii WOMEN OF THE WAR

performance of the tasks which women have undertaken. If any of these chapters succeed in creating a living atmosphere in which readers picture themselves working under similar conditions in similar fields of labour, the primary object of the book will have been fulfilled. Much will be written hereafter on every form of women's service touched on in these little accounts. They claim only to be windows through which may be seen that wide vista which has for its foreground the fulfilment of the great tasks of the war, and for its background a limitless horizon of potential effort.

B. McL.

Contents

I. DR GARRETT ANDERSON, C.B.E., AND DR FLORA MURRAY, C.B.E.

PAGK

The first women doctors to manage a Military Hospital under the

II

As a monument to human endurance and courage there can be no more wonderful record than that of Lady Paget's Hospital Unit in Serbia. The whole unit, several members of which were Americans, worked with a devotion and a loyalty unsurpassed during the war, but in Lady Paget they had a born leader, and a woman of indomitable heroism. At all the crucial moments, of which there were many, Lady Paget's wisdom, tact, foresight, and rapidity of decision saved the situation and enabled her hospital to render inestimable work to stricken Serbia.

Lady Paget, as wife of a former British Minister to Serbia, already possessed a wide experience of Balkan hospital work, having worked through the two Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913.

In November 1914, Lady Paget's Hospital Unit reached Uskub. This was one of the most critical phases for Serbia in the whole war. The Austrian invasion was at its height, and the Serbian armies, their ammunition exhausted, were being driven helplessly through the country before the enemy guns. Uskub was one of the main hospital bases, though the conditions there were of the roughest as regards sanitation and hospital equipment. As soon as Lady Paget's hospital could be hurriedly installed it was filled to overflowing with wounded Serbian soldiers, and for three months the work was incessant. When the surgical work began to slacken, the great typhus epidemic swept over the country. The Serbians had no means of meeting it, and Lady Paget, with two doctors and two nurses, by superhuman labours prepared a great Typhus Colony at Uskub, Lady Paget herself undertaking the hardest menial work of scrubbing and cooking, and sparing herself no risk in washing and caring for the infected patients. By the labours of this gallant staff of five, and some Austrian prisoners working under them as orderlies, huge barracks were converted into hospital buildings and filled with hundreds of typhusstricken soldiers within little over a week. Then Lady Paget herself caught the deadly fever, and for many days her life was despaired of. She was so much beloved throughout Serbia that her danger was felt as a national disaster, and the children of peasants in far-away places, where she was known only by name, were taught to pray for her daily, while in the synagogues a special day was set apart for prayers for her recovery.

In the spring, before Lady Paget was fully restored to health, she returned to England to prepare for further work, and in July 1915 she again went to Serbia. She returned to her previous headquarters at Uskub and reorganised her staff, and during August and September the hospital was continuously full.

About the middle of October the storm of invasion again broke over the unhappy little country, and, while the German and Austrian armies swept down from the north, the Bulgarians poured in from the east. It was at this point that Lady Paget had one of her most momentous decisions to make. The Serbian population was flying before the oncoming tide of the enemy armies — "one of the greatest tragedies in history," Lady Paget wrote ; " a nation was shattered, crushed, and driven forth into the wilderness to die of cold and hunger." But, refusing to desert her Serbian patients, and in the hope of being able to save her large hospital stores for the help of the refugees, Lady Paget, with her staff, gallantly decided, in spite of strong opposition, to remain at Uskub and face the enemy. Describing this critical decision, a friend wrote of her : " Lady Paget's will was the only fixed point that night in the universal land-slide around her. By setting her single will against the stampede, she turned back the flood of panic that was hurrying the wretched inhabitants of the town away to certain destruction ; for the next day in Uskub, when it became known that the British Mission was staying to look after the wounded, it went far to reassure the people, and hundreds who would otherwise have gone to their death in the icy mountains of Albania remained in the shelter of their homes."

With the coming of the Bulgarians on October 22nd began a long and difficult period. Until the middle of February 1916 the Hospital Unit remained at Uskub, prisoners in the enemy's hands. But, owing to Lady Paget's tact and resource, they were able to carry on work of inestimable value, not only in nursing many hundred wounded, both Serbian, Bulgarian, and Austrian, but also in feeding and clothing thousands of Serbian refugees. Through the worst weeks of winter, between three and four thousand were fed and clothed daily, and from first to last over 70,000 were relieved entirely from Lady Paget's stores. It is a remarkable tribute to her personality that the enemy, though not too plentifully equipped themselves, should yet have allowed her to retain possession of this large quantity of stores, trusting as they did to her scrupulous sense of fairness and straight-dealing.

By February 1916, Lady Paget and her workers had done all in their power for Serbia. By this time the refugees had been either interned or sent to their homes, the hospital had been evacuated of patients, the staff was worn out with hard work, and the stores were exhausted. After difficult negotiations Lady Paget obtained permission to leave and was able to return with her unit to England.

This is the third war in which she has given herself unsparingly to help the Serbians, and she has become an object of worship to this desolate people. To mark the national gratitude, King Peter has bestowed upon her the first class of the Order of St Sava, an honour that had never before been given to an uncrowned woman.

Ill

MISS LILIAN BARKER, C.B.E., AND MISS MABEL COTTERELL

The first element in the great development of munition work during the war, which has drawn women in tens of thousands into the service of their country, has certainly been the all-powerful motive of patriotism. But second to this, the practical success of the work has been made possible largely through the recognition and development of welfare work. What we understand nowadays by "welfare" does not consist merely in the provision of canteens and other amenities for workers. It means the study of human nature, the introduction of the humanising element into work. Experience has proved that there is nothing in the world so calculated to get the best out of human nature as the human touch. Welfare work, undertaken sporadically in this country since the beginning of the nineteenth century, has been gradually introduced in our factories by the more enlightened employers, but the advent of women in such great numbers to munition works has set the seal of official approval on the system.

The result of this work cannot be better illustrated than by the example of what has been accomplished by two of the most successful welfare workers.

Miss Lilian Barker, the Lady Superintendent at the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich, supervises the women operators employed there with the good humour and sagacity of an ideal statesman. When Miss Barker took up her work at Woolwich in December 1915, there were 400 women and girls employed at the Arsenal. To-day there are over 25,000, every one of whom has been personally engaged by this "superwoman" of Woolwich.

Round Miss Barker's office there gathers a constant throng of workers, and it is one of her tasks, with the assistants whom she has trained, to straighten out their difficulties, to inquire into their grievances, and to act if need be as mediator with their superior officers. She advises all who come to her for help as to their health, their meals, their recreation, and the hundred and one details which the domestic guardian of a huge works can set to rights by understanding, patience, and tact. It is hard to give an adequate impression of the wonderful atmosphere which Miss Barker has created at Woolwich, but a visitor privileged to go round the shops in her company cannot fail to be deeply struck, not only by her influence with the workers, but by the general sense of contentment and health. As one approaches a shop, one hears the girls singing at their work — a sure sign of happiness. When Miss Barker enters, their faces light up, gay greetings pass, and one feels instinctively the confidence and mutual trust with which she has inspired her great family.

Miss Barker makes frequent tours round the women's shops (it is said to take a week to go over the whole Arsenal), and all the time she is on the watch for possible improvements — perhaps the better ventilation of a factory, or some needed alteration in a cloakroom — stopping ever and again for a word with a girl on some matter relating to her well-being. It is rare to see a sickly face, even among the workers in the danger zone, and visitors are struck by the high proportion of good looks, even of beauty. The workers are drawn from every grade of society, but the democracy of the overall and cap levels all distinctions.

Recently much trouble was experienced by the Arsenal management owing to bad timekeeping in the shops. Able to earn considerable sums of money by working only three or four days weekly, the girls were apt to stay away for the rest of the week. Miss Barker was approached and asked to take over the responsibility for the timekeeping, never before part of her work, and the results were astonishing. " If you leave 200 fuse-rings incomplete," she would say, in making personal appeals to small groups of girls, "they delay 200 fuses. 200 fuses delay 200 shells from being sent out to the front. Think what 200 shells might mean to Tommy in a tight corner ! " Miss Barker knows the wisdom of instilling into each worker the sense of her personal responsibility, and under her inspiration the timekeeping difficulty is no longer an acute problem.

Miss Mabel Cotterell is another welfare worker who has accomplished a stupendous task. Little more than a year ago the first buildings of the greatest Filling Factory in the country began to rise from a desolate bog on the borders of England and Scotland. During the year a town has grown to house the thousands of women employees who came to work in answer to the national appeal for their help. Miss Cotterell engaged and took to

Gretna the first fifty fisher-girls from the Aberdeen coast. " I had one assistant in those days," Miss Cotterell recalls, " and we met the new-comers at the countryside station and took them over the fields to the hostel and the bungalow which had been furnished for their use. It was well they came first in the summer days, for there were then no proper roads, no lights, no shops, no halls or clubrooms, while at the factory the canteens were not ready for use. However, it was warm and sunny, and there were flowers and the birds sang. The girls carried sandwich lunches with them, had a good meat meal on returning to the hostel, and a pleasant country walk in the evening."

To-day there are 64 hostels and 30 bungalows at Gretna, and Miss Cotterell has an army of assistants, clerks, matrons, and factory supervisors. The former wilderness is now inhabited by a well-housed community, organised in all details with a thoroughness and practical care which speak volumes for the genius of its moving spirit.

When the workers came to inhabit the convenient and attractive homes prepared for them, they found that equally enlightened plans had been formulated for their welfare. Miss Cotterell has kept careful watch of the leisure hours of those under her charge, and she has seen that every opportunity for rest, recreation, and improvement is open to them, and facilities for reading, writing, playing games, and attending classes. Periodic entertainments are given — sometimes by the " Gretna Ramblers," a troupe of munition girls who have been trained in singing, dancing, and recitation.

The added responsibility of having the girls entirely resident, as at Gretna, entails serious problems. The whole work of catering, and the domestic arrangements of the hostels fall on the Welfare Department. Another of its duties is to file the record of every girl in the factory ; and the procedure for discharges, leave of absence, transfers, or sick leave, all passes through this Department — a considerable task when, at the rate at which the factory is increasing, as many as 200 new girls arrive in one day. Inevitably, difficulties of administration are not unknown, even in a model community. There has been occasional shortage of furniture, dampness of new houses, or girl workers unaccustomed to discipline who decline to obey orders. But difficulties seem to vanish under Miss Cotterell's experienced touch. Her wise administration is already responsible for a marked improvement, not only in health and physique, which good food, clean housing, and regular employment have brought to the workers. Her influence is also noticeable in a greater regard for truth, honesty, and duty.

This outcome of women's munition work will mean much in the future developments of their industrial life. Women like Miss Barker and Miss Cotterell, in attempting a great achievement, have accomplished an immeasurable one.

IV

MISS C. E. MATHESON AND THE VILLAGE LAND WORKERS

Early in 1915, when recruiting for the Army was beginning to draw men away from agriculture as from all other work, a first effort was made to substitute women for men on the land. Although she knew nothing of agriculture, or the management of live stock, and was unaccustomed to hard manual work, Miss Matheson determined to offer herself as one of the pioneers. Before the war she was known in a very different sphere, for as a promising authoress of the younger school she had already attracted wide popularity. On volunteering, Miss Matheson was sent for a four weeks' agricultural training course to a Farm Institute to learn to milk ; to make butter ; to harness and drive a team ; to clean, dress, and prepare land ; to plant and hoe ; to clean stables and cowhouses ; to feed cattle ; to disregard backaches, weariness and blistered hands ; and to live a new, hard life. After this breaking in, she went to a Wiltshire dairy-farmer who possessed forty to fifty cows in milk. He was prejudiced against women workers, and Miss Matheson's first day was not a happy one. Writing of it afterwards, she said : " I arrived on a Saturday. On Sunday morning I assisted with the milking, and found I was expected to milk at least eight or ten animals. My four weeks' training had simply taught me how — there had been little time for practising new accomplishments. Consequently my employer told me he would not require me after the end of the week. This announcement was a shock, and exceedingly discouraging. However, I toiled through that week, and at the end of it was asked to stay. Soon I was milking from eight to fifteen cows twice a day ; had full charge of the churns and pails, took the milk to the station to meet the London train, looked after the poultry and helped on the land — harvesting, threshing, spreading manure, etc."

Of course, such work meant rising at five, and by the time Miss Matheson returned from her evening drive to the station it was nearly seven, but the station drive was, she said, a pleasurable duty, " for the sight of the London train reminded me that I still lived in the world."

Miss Matheson spent seven months on the Wiltshire farm, and the farmer on her departure paid her the compliment of engaging three girls to assist him. She then went to the Prince of Wales's farm on the Duchy of Cornwall estate, where she is still working.

This farm specialises in stock-breeding, and the herd is a large and valuable one. With cows to milk, calves to rear, bulls to groom arijl exercise, food to prepare, bedding to change, the work is perpetual, for there are only three workers to tend the animals, and people in charge of stock must work seven days a week. During the winter the cattle claim all the time and attention, but in the summer Miss Matheson manages to help on the land in addition. When autumn came, Miss Matheson's employers at the Duchy farm began to wonder if she would be able to stand the winter work, but she hastened unhesitatingly to reassure them. The work certainly needs pluck and endurance, both physical and mental. The handling of bulls, for instance, demands no small amount of nerve. " I have had one or two adventures with the bulls," wrote Miss Matheson to a friend, " and though I must confess I tremble at times, I manage to hold my own. Of course, I could get help if I asked for it, but I do dislike asking. It gives one such an only-a-girl sort of feeling, and then again I am always afraid to let anyone know that sometimes I am afraid." It is unnecessary to state the reasons which bring an educated woman voluntarily to take up such a hard and exacting life, not merely for a few weeks of summer, but month after month. Only a deeplyrooted motive can be the impelling force, and there can be no finer form of patriotism than the unsensational performance of these strenuous tasks, far from the glamour and excitement of direct contact with the war. Not only in the fruits of her own labour, but by the force of her example, as one of the pioneers along a new road for women, Miss Matheson is performing as fine a war service as any Englishwoman to-day.

Just as the educated women have made an inspiring response to the call of the country in taking up agricultural work, so also have the women of the villages. In many country districts they have always been accustomed to work on the land, but to-day thousands who never worked before have come forward to give the most concrete proof of their patriotism. They are rightly proud to be entitled to wear the green Government armlet, given for 30 days' work or 240 hours.

The most recent development of women's land work is their employment on timber-felling and bark-stripping ; and though this is a completely new industry for women, and has not so far been taken up on a general scale, the results of the first experiments are full of promise. Timber work has been started in Devonshire under the energetic auspices of Miss Calmady Hamlyn, the inspecting officer for the Western District of England under the Board of Agriculture. An expert woodman instructor, after watching some of the novices at work, pronounced that in barking these women already excel men, and in tree-felling they will certainly equal them.

Many of the village women whose husbands are serving have wisely taken up land work as being the best antidote to worry. From Devonshire comes the story of a soldier ordered to the front, who gave his wife the parting counsel : " My dear, you go up and work on that old field to-morrow ; it will help you more than anything." Mrs Hockin went, and worked indomitably at any job in all weathers, and is proud that she can earn a man's day- wage at piecework. " Why I am a war worker is because I felt it was my duty to do my bit," Mrs Hockin writes. " I am a married woman with three children. My husband has joined the Army, and I have done my best to help my country. As I live in the country, there is nothing for me to do but to work on the land, which I have done for nearly two years. ... I have worked on the farm doing various kinds of work, such as weeding corn, hoeing turnips, spreading manure over the fields, turning up ground, picking in apples, wheeling away coke, helping in the harvest-fields, both hay and corn, and,

by what our employers have told our instructor, we have given them every satisfaction." Mrs Hockin has recently taken up the new timber- felling work, and is now leader of a gang of wood women. Though she is new to the work, Mrs Hockin is able to fell trees at the rate of thirty in half a day, and she states that she does not find the work unduly fatiguing, though " a bit windy."

An agricultural demonstration by women, held recently in Surrey under the auspices of the Board of Agriculture, provided striking examples of the excellence of women's agricultural work. A hundred and twenty women took part, the majority of whom have started the work since the war. They entered for competitions in ploughing, harrowing, milking, management of calves and horses, hoeing corn, hand weeding, etc. In spite of the difficulties occasioned by bad weather, and having to work with strange animals under unfamiliar conditions, the women succeeded in making a deep impression on the farmers who came to watch their efforts. The sensation of the afternoon was caused in the milking competition, when the first prize was won by Miss M. Soutar, aged 10 J, who obtained a total of ninety-five points out of a possible hundred. Experimental demonstrations of this kind will do much to solve one of the greatest difficulties in the employment of women, namely, the conversion of the farmers ; but most of those who have given the women a chance have not had cause to regret it.

When the farmers recognise the motive behind the women's work, and are willing not only to employ them but to treat them generously, it is certain that both farmers and women, working together under the same influence of patriotism, are bound to achieve results of which both may be proud.

s>

To J ace p. 19,

V DR ELSIE INGLIS

To Miss Inglis, M.B., CM., belongs the honour of originating the Scottish Women's Hospitals, one of the noblest efforts achieved by women in the war. As a medical woman, Dr Inglis, who qualified in 1892, has specialised in surgery, and for many years she has held the posts of surgeon and gynaecologist to the Edinburgh Hospital and Dispensary for Women and Children, and lecturer to the School of Medicine in Edinburgh.

At the outbreak of war Dr Inglis felt that the medical services of women should be organised for the country, and she originated the idea of forming the Scottish Women's Hospital Units for war service, staffed entirely by women. The idea was carried out through the organisation of the Scottish Federation of Women Suffrage Societies. In the early months the War Office, though since converted, refused to accept women's hospitals, so Dr Inglis and her committee offered their services to the Allies. Their record of work is truly wonderful, and presents an outstanding example of women's industry and administrative ability. Hospitals have been established and maintained in France, Serbia, Corsica, Salonika, Rumania, and Russia, and the work has been entirely supported by the funds which the organisation has raised, mainly through the branches of the National Union of Women Suffrage Societies throughout Great Britain.

Dr Inglis has been throughout the leading spirit, and has displayed extraordinary initiative. After spending the first months of the war in starting the work at headquarters, she went to Serbia in 1915 to act as Commissioner to the Scottish Women's Hospitals established there. One unit on its way to Serbia was detained for a few weeks in Malta for service with the British wounded at a moment of medical shortage, and Lord Methuen, the Military Governor, wrote a glowing appreciation of their work. " They leave here," he wrote, "blessed by myself, surgeons, nurses, and patients alike, having proved themselves most capable and untiring workers." In Serbia the Scottish women were confronted with all the hardships and difficulties experienced by workers in that unfortunate country. Undaunted, however, they established their hospitals, heroically overcoming the problems of sanitation and supplies which beset them on all sides. The hospital at Kragujevatz, over which Dr Inglis had personal charge, was described by the military authorities as a picture of cleanliness, order, and comfort.

When the time of the Serbian retreat came, the five hospitals in charge of the Scottish women fell back towards Albania. At Krushevatz Dr Inglis decided to remain with her staff to care for the Serbian wounded during the enemy occupation. Another unit under Dr Alice Hutchinson also stayed, and was taken prisoner ; while the remaining staffs accompanied the retreating armies across the mountains.

"These months at Krushevatz were a strange

Bassano.

DR ELSIE INGLIS.

mixture of sorrow and happiness," Dr Inglis wrote afterwards. " There was a curious exhilaration in working for those grateful, patient men . . . yet the unhappiness in the Serbian houses and the physical wretchedness of those cold, hungry prisoners lay always like a dead weight on our spirits."

By February 1916 the hospital was emptied and the staff sent as prisoners to Vienna. After enduring many discomforts, they were eventually released through the good offices of the American Embassy, and enabled to return to England, where their friends had heard no word of them during four months. When the veil was at last lifted, it showed Dr Inglis coming out of all the stress and suffering the first woman to wear the decoration of the White Eagle, given to her by the Serbian Government in recognition of her services. Other members of her unit received the Order of St Sava. " The Serbian nation," said the Crown Prince, "will never forget what these women have done."