The Next of Kin | Page 4

time to work out all of our
difficulties, and it won't; there is no curative quality in time! And what
I am most afraid of is that we will settle down after the war, and slip
right back into our old ways,--our old peaceful ways,--and let men go
on ruling the world, and war will come again and again. Men have done
their very best,--I am not feeling hard to them,--but I know, and the
thoughtful men know, that men alone can never free the world from the
blight of war; and if we go on, too gentle and sweet to assert ourselves,
knitting, nursing, bringing children into the world, it will surely come

to pass, when we are old, perhaps, and not able to do anything,--but
suffer,--that war will come again, and we shall see our daughters'
children or our granddaughters' children sent off to fight, and their
heart-broken mothers will turn on us accusing eyes and say to us, 'You
went through all this--you knew what this means--why didn't you do
something?' That is my bad dream when I sit knitting, because I feel
hard toward the women that are gone. They were a poor lot, many of
them. I like now best of all Jennie Geddes who threw the stool at
somebody's head. I forget what Jennie's grievance was, but it was the
principle that counts--she had a conviction, and was willing to fight for
it. I never said these things--until I got this." She still held the letter,
with its red inscription, in her hand. "But now I feel that I have earned
the right to speak out. I have made a heavy investment in the cause of
Humanity and I am going to look after it. The only thing that makes it
possible to give up Alex is the hope that Alex's death may help to make
war impossible and so save other boys. But unless we do something his
death will not help a bit; for this thing has always been--and that is the
intolerable thought to me. I am willing to give my boy to die for others
if I am sure that the others are going to be saved, but I am not willing
that he should die in vain. You see what I mean, don't you?"
I told her that I did see, and that I believed that she had expressed the
very thought that was in the mind of women everywhere.
"Well, then," she said quickly, "why don't you write it? We will forget
this when it is all over and we will go back to our old pursuits and there
will be nothing--I mean, no record of how we felt. Anyway, we will die
and a new generation will take our places. Why don't you write it while
your heart is hot?"
"But," I said, "perhaps what I should write would not truly represent
what the women are thinking. They have diverse thoughts, and how can
I hope to speak for them?"
"Write what you feel," she said sternly. "These are fundamental things.
Ideas are epidemic--they go like the measles. If you are thinking a
certain thing, you may be sure you have no monopoly of it; many
others are thinking it too. That is my greatest comfort at this time.

Write down what you feel, even if it is not what you think you ought to
feel. Write it down for all of us!"
And that is how it happened. There in the Municipal Hall in the small
town of Ripston, as we sat round the stove that cold November day,
with the sleet sifting against the windows, I got my commission from
these women, whom I had not seen until that day, to tell what we think
and feel, to tell how it looks to us, who are the mothers of soldiers, and
to whom even now the letter may be on its way with its curt inscription
across the corner. I got my commission there to tell fearlessly and
hopefully the story of the Next of Kin.
It will be written in many ways, by many people, for the brand of this
war is not only on our foreheads, but deep in our hearts, and it will be
reflected in all that our people write for many years to come. The
trouble is that most of us feel too much to write well; for it is hard to
write of the things which lie so heavy on our hearts; but the picture is
not all dark--no picture can be. If it is all dark, it ceases to be a picture
and becomes a blot. Belgium has its tradition of deathless glory, its
imperishable memories of gallant bravery which lighten its darkness
and make it shine like noonday. The