The Women's Victory—and After: Personal Reminiscences, 1911-1918

We also had evidence at this time of the support of another religious body, the Society of Friends, who this year, in their Annual Epistle, issued from the London yearly meeting, made a very sympathetic reference to the women's movement. We valued this all the more because of their fine record in the matter of sex equality in religious matters from the foundation of their society. They had from the first practised as well as preached the doctrine of equality as between men and women, and had again and again been pioneers in matters of education and social reform, besides giving us many of our most valued colleagues and leaders.

In 1913 also the National Union of Women Workers (now the National Council of Women) had the last of a series of tussles with Mrs. Humphry Ward. The point at issue between the suffragists and antisuffragists in the N.U.W.W. was the necessary majority required on any particular subject before the executive committee was justified in taking action upon it. A committee for revising the constitution had been at work, and had presented a report recommending, among other things, that no action should be taken on any controversial point unless such action were supported by a three-fourths majority; this was by way of an olive-branch, as the necessary majority under the old constitution had been one of two-thirds. To this proposed compromise the antisuffragists presented a solid opposition. Some desired that the council should be deprived of the power of passing resolutions at all. Mrs. Ward proposed that no resolution should be binding unless passed unanimously – a reminiscence, apparently, of the liberum veto which contributed so much to the ruin of the old Polish Constitution. Driven from this position, she then proposed to give to any five branches and five affiliated societies an absolute veto upon the proceedings of the council. In each of these efforts Mrs. Ward was unsuccessful, and in a gathering of over 400 she could not rally sufficient votes to carry any of her points. The Antisuffrage Society in consequence withdrew from the N.U.W.W., and figuratively shook its dust from their feet.

At the opening of this chapter I referred to the more favourable tone in the Press upon women's suffrage and allied questions. For quite a number of years we had had true and faithful friends in the Manchester Guardian, the Aberdeen Free Press, and in Punch, and other papers. The latter gave us a series of first-rate pictures and cartoons, which I hope one day may be reproduced as Punch's "History of Women's Suffrage." Its occasional verses were also very crisp and to the point. A couple of specimens are here reproduced. The first was apropos of Mr. Asquith's frequent statement in the course of his struggle with the House of Lords that "the will of the people must prevail."

"You speak, Mr. Asquith, the suffragist said,Of the Will of the People wholesale;But has the idea never entered your headThat the People are not wholly male?"

Another, which was headed "Any Premier to any Suffragist," ran thus:

"So, lady, it is plain,While at your claim one man shies,Until you have the vote 'tis vainTo ask us for the franchise."

About this time the editor of the Daily Telegraph allotted space in his paper once a week, under the heading of "Women in Public Life," for the discussion of all kinds of women's activities, including suffrage. It also gave good telegraphic summaries of events bearing on the women's cause in foreign countries, and sometimes even printed the speeches of suffrage leaders verbatim. As our struggle for suffrage became more and more a struggle with Mr. Asquith it not unnaturally followed that those papers were naturally estranged from us which lived, and moved, and had their being in believing that he was the first of men, and that everything he said and did was perfect. They did not go back definitely, and in so many words, upon their former record in support of free representative institutions, but they gave us many a back-hander, published everything conspicuously which they thought likely to be damaging to us, and suppressed such events as told in our favour. I give an instance. In a copy of an evening paper in 1913 I saw in one column, apropos of some House of Commons incident, that "Mrs. Fawcett was in despair"; in another that "Mr. Birrell had finished with women's suffrage for ever"; and that "Mr. Wilfred Ashley had felt compelled to vote against it." As I knew I was not in despair, and had never given any justification for the assertion that I was, I contemplated with some calm the assertions about Mr. Birrell and Mr. Ashley. We did not complain of this sort of treatment. The tactics it revealed were too transparent to do our movement any real harm. The papers which we familiarly referred to as "the three Posts" – the Morning Post, the Birmingham Post, and the Yorkshire Post– remained out-and-out antisuffrage all through down to the very end of our struggle. But the Standard, which at one time had refused even to insert colourless paragraphs of suffrage news, passed to new editorship, and became much more favourable. It referred sympathetically to our by-election campaigns in 1912 and 1913, saying that suffragists "were displaying energy of the first order"; and after the procession in the Coronation year, which had attracted much favourable notice, it arranged for the daily appearance of a special page, entitled "Woman's Platform," in which facts and arguments for and against suffrage were inserted. This was of great use to us, and we welcomed the publication of the antisuffrage copy, because this gave the paper an entry into the strongholds of our opponents, and also enabled us to judge of their policy and tactics. For instance, it was in the "Woman's Platform" of the Standard, in 1913, that Mr. MacCallum Scott called upon his Liberal friends in the House of Commons to break their suffrage pledges in order to save Mr. Asquith from the humiliation of keeping the promises he had made to us.

In 1913 the Conservative and Unionist Women's Franchise Association, of which the Countess of Selborne had become President, had the happy thought of instituting through the medium of a joint committee of suffragists and antisuffragists a systematic and careful enquiry into the results of women's suffrage in those States of the U.S.A. where it had been put into operation. A questionnaire was drawn up and sent to men and women occupying positions of authority and influence in these States. Of the sixty-three replies received, forty-six were wholly favourable, eight neutral, five vaguely unfavourable, and only four wholly adverse.

The late Hon. Robert Palmer, Lady Selborne's son, tabulated the replies, and published an explanatory comment on them from the suffrage point of view, while the same task on behalf of the antisuffragists was performed by Mr. MacCallum Scott, M.P.

Both reports appeared in the form of articles in the Nineteenth Century and After of February, 1914. Mr. Palmer's article was later published as a small volume, and formed a valuable handbook for suffrage speakers. The supporters of suffrage in the U.S.A. frequently expressed themselves as convinced by experience that the women voters strengthened the forces which made for good government, using such expressions as this: "I do not think we could have cleaned up the city without the women's vote"; or, "At that time I was opposed to woman suffrage … but since I have had experience of it I have become favourable." Mr. MacCallum Scott did not, of course, deny that by an immense majority the replies had supported the women's vote, or that it had been followed, in California, for example, by the immediate passing of much long-sought-for social legislation; but he concluded his article with the words: "I have tried to sum up the evidence as impartially as possible, but I have not tried to conceal my own views, and I have found nothing in the evidence to modify them."

Another very significant breach in the antisuffragist Press stronghold was revealed when on the last day of 1913 The Times published one of its American Supplements "On the Pacific Coast," and, to the amazement and joy of suffragists, wrote most warmly in praise of the complete success of women's suffrage on the whole Pacific seaboard. Suffragists had won the State of Washington in 1910, California in 1911, Oregon and Arizona in 1912. We had expected nothing from The Times but flouts, and gibes, and sneers, and lo! it blessed us altogether. The concluding paragraph sufficiently indicates the general character of the article. It ran thus:

"One-fifth of the United States Senate, one-seventh of the House of Representatives, and one-sixth of the Presidential electoral vote of the United States comes now from States where women exercise suffrage just as men do. Homes have not been disrupted, marriages have not lessened, children have not failed because of the political enfranchisement of women. Instead, there has come a more solemn feeling of obligation, a greater feeling of responsibility on the part of men and women, a higher moral tone in candidates and in measures, and an effort to make the city streets and the country at large a safer place for children when they leave the precincts where maternal love reigns supreme. The women of the suffrage States care not only for their own children, but for the children of women not so fortunately placed."

What a change this represented from the time, three years earlier, when every day for nearly a fortnight The Times in its leading articles and correspondence columns fulminated on the unmeasured national misfortunes which must necessarily result from the enfranchisement of women.

Immediately all our group wrote for as many copies of this blessed supplement as our newsagents could supply. The stock from this source was quickly exhausted; then I wrote officially to The Times office, asking for more, only to receive the reply that no more copies could be obtained. Then we applied for leave to reprint, but the request was declined on the ground that it was the intention of the management to publish the whole supplement in book form. On enquiring the probable date and price, the first question was unanswered, and the reply to the second mentioned what we considered a prohibitive sum.

But we never saw that book. Of course, I carefully preserved my own copy, and quoted it continually when I was speaking. The evidence it gave coincided entirely with what we had learned from our American friends at the Congress of the International Women's Suffrage Alliance held the previous June at Buda Pest, when ladies from the newly enfranchised State of California had told us that, after winning the vote, they had gained in six months legislative reforms for which (without the vote) they had been labouring in vain for twenty years. Twenty months of suffrage, our American friends told us, were worth more than twenty years of "influence."

Another of the signs of the great progress of our cause was the continual increase of the support given to it in modern drama. At this time nearly all the really telling plays by up-to-date writers were practically suffrage plays. Some – like How the Vote was Won, by Miss Cecily Hamilton; Votes for Women, by Miss Elizabeth Robins; and Press Cuttings, by Mr. Bernard Shaw – were propaganda plays pure and simple, and very good propaganda, too, extremely witty and amusing. Others, even more telling because a good deal more subtle in method, were by Sir James Barrie, Mr. Arnold Bennett, and many by Mr. Bernard Shaw. These were of very great service to our cause, as well as a sign of its progress; while the plays on the moral aspects of our movement, such as Les Trois Filles de M. Dupont and Les Avariés, by M. Brieux, brought our message to thousands whom we could not have reached unaided.

No wonder that, with all the influences enumerated in this chapter working in our favour, we felt we were on the eve of victory. We quoted, with an application to ourselves, Cavour's prophetic saying, "La cosa va." Seldom has a political movement had such a various army of allies: the Trades Union Congress, the Labour Party, the Church Congress, the annual meeting of the Society of Friends, the Ulster Unionist Council, the Press, the Pulpit, and the Theatre. But a great catastrophe was at hand, which for four and a half years concentrated all thoughts on national safety, and, above all, on the preservation of the principles of free representative government, not merely in our own country, but throughout the world.

CHAPTER VII

THE WORLD WAR AND WOMEN'S WAR WORK

"What have I done for you,England, my England?What is there I would not do,England, my own?With your glorious eyes austere,As if the Lord were walking near,Whispering terrible things and dearAs the song on your bugles blown,England —Round the world on your bugles blown."W. E. Henley.

In the midst of all the plans of organized work detailed in previous chapters, which were certain, as we thought, to lead to speedy victory for the suffrage cause, we were suddenly startled by the trumpet call of war, the world war, the greatest which ever had been waged, and our own country was to be a protagonist in it. The wanton violation of Belgium neutrality by the Germans made this a certainty. Very soon, too, we realized how right the socialists of the allied countries – England, France, Belgium, and Russia – were when they agreed that "a victory for German Imperialism would be the defeat and destruction of democracy and liberty in Europe," and we recognized that our cause, the political freedom of women, was but a special case of the still greater cause for which the Allies were fighting. Clearly as we began to perceive this, it will easily be recognized that the time of the outbreak of war was a time of no little perplexity and anguish of mind to nearly all of us. But from the first our duty was quite clear – namely, to help our country and her allies to the utmost of our ability; many of us, however, myself included, believed that the great catastrophe of the world war would greatly hamper and retard the movement to which we had dedicated our lives. It only very gradually dawned upon us that one of the first results of the war would be the emancipation of women in our own and many other countries.

It will be remembered that England entered the war against Germany at midnight on Tuesday, August 4th, 1914. All that day and the previous day the Executive Committee of the N.U.W.S.S. had sat in anxious consultation. We were a tolerably large band of organized women – over 50,000 members, and about 500 societies – scattered all over the country, accustomed to work together in a disciplined, orderly fashion for a common end; we felt, therefore, that we had a special gift, such as it was, to offer for our country's service – namely, our organizing and money-raising power.

In my first message to our societies, published in the Common Cause on August 7th, 1914, I had said:

"In the midst of this time of terrible anxiety and grief, it is some little comfort to think that our large organization, which has been carefully built up during past years to promote women's suffrage, can be used now to help our country through this period of strain and sorrow. 'He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it.' Let us show ourselves worthy of citizenship, whether our claim to it be recognized or not."

In the ordinary course of things we could not by the rules of our union have made any change in our methods of work, and still less have applied our organization to any other object than the gaining of the parliamentary franchise for women, without calling our council together and receiving its express authorization. The circumstances of the hour rendered this impossible, and we took the only available alternative: we consulted our societies by post. Even this was not quite simple, as a large number of the officers of our societies were scattered, at the beginning of August, in various holiday resorts. However, it was the best we could do, and the Executive Committee intimated to all the societies its opinion that the ordinary political work of the union and all propaganda must be suspended; and that the best way of using our staff and organizing capacity would be in initiating forms of work designed to mitigate the suffering which the war would bring.

The alleviation of distress among women caused by the dislocation of employment due to the war was our first object. When events rendered efforts in this direction no longer necessary, we enlarged the scope of our activities so as to include everything that was calculated to "sustain the vital energies of the nation." But the preliminary necessity in that first week of the war was to know that we had the backing of our societies throughout the country. We had consulted them by post on August 3rd, and we met again on August 6th to consider the replies received. Ninety-nine per cent. of these acquiesced in our suggestion. Two of them contained sketch plans of methods of work on the new lines. We concentrated at first on using our whole organization for the relief of distress caused by the war. We suggested to each of our societies that it should formally offer the services of its officers and members to the Lord Mayor, Mayor, or Chairman of the Council in its own district, and should volunteer to take part in the local relief committees which were being formed in every local government area under directions issued by the Local Government Board. Like almost everyone else in those troubled, anxious times, we expected that there would be a great deal of distress owing to unemployment; and there was temporarily great dislocation of industry and lack of work, especially among women. On August 27th, 1914, we unanimously adopted a resolution, moved and seconded by our hon. secretary and hon. parliamentary secretary, urging the Government, long before anything of the kind had been done, to adopt the principle in the Government offices, and in all suitable occupations, of the substitution of women's labour for men's. We pressed this on the Government with the double motive – to increase the demand for women's labour, and to set free a large number of men of military age who were keenly anxious to join the newly forming armies. Our suggestion met with no response. But I cannot but look back with gratification that we made it at that early date.

While out-of-work distress lasted among women, we opened, in various parts of the country, forty workshops, and gave employment to over 2,000 women. I well remember the resentment and melancholy of some able young women in our employment when they saw the advertisements everywhere displayed calling upon young men to join the colours, announcing in huge letters Your Country wants You, and reflected that their country did not want them. We endeavoured, so far as lay in our power, to check this feeling of discontent by not diminishing our own demand for the services of women. We did not add to the volume of unemployment by dismissing on account of the war any of our staff or organizers. We paid the salaries and lent the services of nearly 150 trained workers all over the country to local relief committees and other bodies responsible for carrying out new work connected with the war.

The officers of our societies in many parts of the country showed great initiative in finding out what the soldiers wanted, and doing it for them. As an example, I may mention the case of the hon. secretary of one of our Kentish societies. It was in the neighbourhood of a large training camp where 12,000 men were congregated. The existing local arrangements for their laundry were quite inadequate, and this lady, of University education, ran a laundry for them most successfully and efficiently. She appealed not only to the well-to-do, but also to domestic servants and other working women in the neighbourhood, to give time regularly in their afternoons to do the necessary mending. She herself devoted her whole time to the work of the laundry, which was a great success from the first.

The London society of the N.U.W.S.S. devoted its great powers and wide experience of London conditions to sorting out efficient women workers to positions where such services, paid or unpaid, were urgently required. This work, under the name of Women's Service, it has continued, with success and efficiency, to the present time. Its energies have been remarkably varied. For instance, it provided the London General Omnibus Company with a hundred women conductors when first the need for them was felt; it was constantly applied to by the War Office and other public departments for women fitted to carry out all kinds of novel employments, such as the judging of the quality and the forwarding of hay for the army. It registered the first great rush of the Belgian refugees, and organized this so efficiently that, when the numbers to be dealt with became so great that the work had to be handed over to Government officials, no change in the system of registration had to be introduced. The London society has from the beginning of the war greatly extended the area of women's employment. It opened a small workshop and taught women acetylene welding for aeroplane work until this establishment was taken over by the Government. H.M. the Queen honoured this workshop by a surprise visit in the summer of 1916, and pleased the workers very much by taking a workshop cup of tea seated on an overturned packing-case.

I believe all our societies, from Cornwall to Stornoway, except those in the prohibited areas, did their part in providing hospitality for the Belgian refugees. The London society opened nine hostels for them in its area, and forwarded to the Government several hundred offers of private hospitality.

Over sixty of our societies, immediately after the declaration of war, devoted themselves to life-saving activities by the formation of maternity centres, baby clinics, schools for mothers, and other similar associations.

Forty-five of our societies became Red Cross centres. One of our societies, within a very few weeks of the outbreak of war, offered to staff and equip a hospital at a naval base in the North of Scotland, but the chief medical officer and the C.O. rejected the offer, with the remark that they did not wish to be troubled by "hysterical women." The officers and members of our societies were extremely active in establishing and providing the necessary funds and labour for keeping up canteens for soldiers on railway-stations, also in starting clubs, guest-rooms, and houses of rest for soldiers. At many of these educational facilities were given, French classes being particularly called for. We also did everything in our power to call attention to and to check the terrible waste which at the outset was taking place in the training camps for soldiers; and our organization was first in the field, afterwards so well tilled by the war savings committees, to call attention to the great national importance of personal and household economy. Many of our most active societies initiated war savings exhibitions and demonstrations in their own area, and by precept and practice showed the great national importance of personal thrift. In London, Liverpool, Cardiff, Brighton, and many other places, we held these "patriotic housekeeping" exhibitions, where short addresses were given, war economy recipes distributed, etc. To women of all classes who constantly passed through them we did not fail to bring home the importance of small daily savings, showing that if every one of us in our domestic expenditure could save on an average twopence a head per day, Sundays excepted, this would be a shilling a week, and a shilling a week for 45,000,000 people, fifty-two weeks in the year, meant an annual saving of £117,000,000. In this way we countered the so-called "argument" so frequently heard: "What is the good of my saving my poor little pence when the Government is throwing away millions in absolute waste, for which no one is a farthing the better?" Women, we reminded our audiences, everywhere and in all classes, were the domestic Chancellors of the Exchequer: domestic expenditure was almost wholly in their hands. Women had often been told in contempt that their business was to "mind the kitchen"; and now they joyfully and proudly determined they would mind the kitchen, and do their part in the service of their country by saving hundreds of millions per year; and they also determined to do this while seeing that by skilful management the physical health of those under their charge was in no way impaired. Their job was to see that every ounce of raw material passing through their hands yielded its full food value.