THE DRAMA OF 365 DAYS
THE WORD OF WOMAN
But long before July 17, 1915, woman's part
in this war began. It began on August 5, 1914,
when the first hundred thousand of our voluntary
army sprang into being as by a miracle.
The miracle (if I am asked to account for it) had
its origin in the word of woman. Without that
word we should have had no Kitchener's Army,
for "on the decision of the women, above everything
else, lay the issues of the men's choice."[1]
It needs little imagination to lift, as it were, the roofs off a hundred homes, and see and hear what was going on there in those early days of the war, after the clear call went out over England, "Your King and Country need you."
In the little house of a City clerk, married only a year before, the young wife is saying, "Yes, I think you ought to go, dear. It's rather a pity, so soon after the boy was born . . . just as you were expecting a rise, too, and we were going to move into that nice cottage in the garden suburb. But, then, it will be all for the best, and you mustn't think of me."
Or perhaps it is early morning in the flat of a young lawyer on the day he has to leave for the front. He is dressed in his khaki, and his wife, who is busying about his breakfast, is
- ↑ The Times.
