England's effort : $b Letters to an American friendWard, Humphry, Mrs.
History
England's effort : $b Letters to an American friend
Ward, Humphry, Mrs.
Great Britain. Army -- Ordnance facilities; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, British; World War, 1914-1918 -- Women
Mrs. Ward has made a careful study of the effect of the novel introduction
of women into all these works of men, especially in the munition
factories, and dwells with great significance upon the rapidity of the
women's piece-work and the mingling of classes, where educated and refined
girls work side by side and very happily with those of an humbler type.
What Mrs. Ward well calls "the common spirit" inspires them all, and holds
them all in just and equal relations. At every step she is startled by the
vastness of the work and the immense hand that women have in it, finding
one shop turning out about four thousand shrapnel and four thousand
high-explosive shells per week, heavy shell work all, which they thought
at first they must furnish men to lift in and out of the machines, but
"the women thrust the men aside in five minutes." Surely this new
education of women, of these girls and women who are to become the mothers
of the next generation, must have a most inspiring and exalting effect
upon the days to come. War may be postponed for whole generations, but
England will never fail to be ready for it as a necessary part of the
education of the race.
It is quite evident that this war is breaking down the barriers that have
heretofore been impassable, not only between men and women, but between
the various classes of society, and that it cannot possibly end without
bringing these more closely together, all working to the same end in a
more perfect harmony, and that the result of it must be that England will
hereafter be an even more perfect democracy than it has been up to this
time.
France! Glorious France! The conduct of whose government and people in the
war seems to have been absolutely perfect, has at last reached a wonderful
result after her hundred years of agonies and revolutions. We hear from
France no complaints, no internal dissensions, but all the people, mankind
and womankind, working together, each in its proper sphere, to the one
common end, the salvation of the State. I trust that we shall never
forget all that the world and we, especially, owe to France. She is adding
to our obligations now by fighting our battles for us.
And now with her daughter under the special protection and guidance of the
war office, this distinguished woman followed the khaki-clad soldiers of
England, now numbered by millions, across the channel, and everything was
thrown freely open to her. She soon found out what the great supply bases,
on which the British army in France rests, really mean, made up of the
Army Ordnance, Army Service, Army Medical, Railroad, Motor, and Transport,
and she found it a deeply interesting study, "whose work has involved the
labor of some of the best brains in the army," and she learned the
organizing power that has gone to make the career of the English army in
France possible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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