that the working class may by its own efforts win its own salvation. CHAPTER II WOMEN AND CHILDREN Going through the London streets during the last two years all of us have seen motor-cars driven by ladies and loaded with wounded soldiers. It is a great sight, which brings home to all of us the fact that the woman who drives the car and the woman who, in many cases, accompanies her as a kind of general servant have, for the time being, banished from their minds all thought of class distinction; they are publicly demonstrating that, so far as the war is concerned, there is an attempt at unity of aim among the rich and wealthy in an effort to lighten the load of suffering and pain endured by those men who, propertyless and poor, possessing nothing of material wealth, possessing not even a single yard of the land millions of them are fighting and dying for, have proved they possess things of _real_ worth--have demonstrated it by deeds of heroic valour on the battlefields of Europe. The spirit that has impelled rich people to do this sort of thing is good and well worth preserving, but as I have looked at them in their comfortable cars, enjoying the pleasure of service, the thought has always come into my mind: “Why do not these people understand that in days of peace there is just as insistent a call to them for this kind of service?” These soldiers are the same men who till the fields, weave our raiment, dig our coal, and, in fact, provide us with all we need; but when they are doing that no rich women desire to give them joy rides. It makes one ask: Are the favours poured out on the _soldier_ or the _man_? There are also tens of thousands of mothers hidden away in the back streets of our great cities who would be benefited by the light and air and cheerful surroundings of a motor drive in the country on a fine summer day--women who have risked no less than the men, have suffered no less, and deserve no less, women who have not killed but have borne. Hundreds of thousands of these women never get a change of scene or a real country holiday away from the grinding poverty of their everyday life. These mothers of England endure the trouble and agony of giving birth to children without that comfort and care of leisure, food, clothing, and surroundings which are at least palliatives for the comfortable classes. They lead lives which are simply one long story of mean, sordid drudgery; their daily life is the common round, the daily task of just living, working, toiling for the bread that perisheth, with very little of joy, and always with a heavy load of care and anxiety. The soldier’s wife or mother has the added worry--“Will he come back? And, if he does return, in what condition will he be brought home again?” Into the lives of these women only occasionally comes the delight of a trip in a crowded tramcar with children, or perhaps a ’bus ride. Even on such days the care and worry of the children mar the whole pleasure of the day’s holiday.