Mobilizing Woman-Power | Page 5

of our party said with a tone of finality, "You see
we wouldn't like our men's faces to look as if they had got into their
mothers' chopping bowls!"
Although I had often lived months on end with all these petty tyrannies
of the mailed fist, and although life had taught me later that peoples
grow by what they feed upon, yet when I read the Bryce report,[1]
German frightfulness seemed too inhuman for belief. While still
holding my judgment in reserve, I met an intimate friend, a Prussian
officer. He happened to mention letters he had received from his
relatives in Berlin and at the front, and when I expressed a wish to hear
them, kindly asked whether he should translate them or read them in
German as they stood. Laughingly I ventured on the German, saying I
would at least find out how much I had forgotten. So I sat and listened
with ears pricked up. Some of the letters were from women folk and
told of war conditions in the capital. They were interesting at the time
but not worth repeating now. Then came a letter from a nephew, a
lieutenant. He gave his experience in crossing Belgium, told how in
one village his men asked a young woman with her tiny baby on her
arm for water, how she answered resentfully, and then, how he shot

her--and her baby. I exclaimed, thinking I had lost the thread of the
letter, "Not the baby?" And the man I supposed I knew as civilized,
replied with a cruel smile, "Yes--discipline!" That was frank, frank as a
child would have been, with no realization of the self-revelation of it.
The young officer did the deed, wrote of it to his uncle, and the uncle,
without vision and understanding, perverted by his training, did not feel
shame and bury the secret in his own heart, but treasured the evidence
against his own nephew, and laid it open before an American woman.
I believed the Bryce report--every word of it!
And I hate the system that has so bent and crippled a great race.
Revenge we must not feel, that would be to innoculate ourselves with
the enemy's virus. But let us be awake to the fact that might making
right cuts athwart our ideals. German Kultur, through worship of
efficiency, cramps originality and initiative, while our aim--why not be
frank about it!--is the protection of inefficiency, which means
sympathy with childhood, and opportunity for the spirit of art. German
Kultur fixes an inflexible limit to the aspirations of women, while our
goal is complete freedom for the mothers of men.
The women of the Allies can fight for all that their men fight for--for
national self-respect, for protection of citizens, for the sacredness of
international agreements, for the rights of small nations, for the security
of democracy, and then our women can be inspired by one thing
more--the safety and development of all those things which they have
won for human welfare in a long and bloodless battle.
Women fight for a place in the sun for those who hold right above
might.
[Footnote 1: Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages
appointed by his Britannic Majesty's Government, 1915. Macmillan
Company, New York.
Evidence and Documents laid before the Committee on Alleged
German Outrages. Ballantyne, Hanson & Co., London. 1915.]

II
WINNING THE WAR
The group of nations that can make the greatest savings, will be
victorious, counsels one; the group that can produce the most food and
nourish the populations best, will win the war, urges another; but
whatever the prophecy, whatever the advice, all paths to victory lie
through labor-power.
Needs are not answered in our day by manna dropping from heaven.
Whether it is food or big guns that are wanted, ships or coal, we can
only get our heart's desire by toil. Where are the workers who will win
the war?
We are a bit spoiled in the United States. We have been accustomed to
rub our Aladdin's lamp of opportunity and the good genii have sent us
workers. But suddenly, no matter how great our efforts, no one answers
our appeal. The reservoir of immigrant labor has run dry. We are in
sorry plight, for we have suffered from emigration, too. Thousands of
alien workers have been called back to serve in the armies of the Allies.
In my own little village on Long Island the industrious Italian colony
was broken up by the call to return to the colors in Piedmont.
Then, too, while Europe suffers loss of labor, as do we, when men are
mobilized, our situation is peculiarly poignant, for when our armies are
gone they are gone. At first this was true in Europe. Men entered the
army and were employed as