Women and War Work — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Women and War Work
John Stuart Mill · en
Girls and women are in market gardens and on private gardens in
very large numbers. The King has a great many women in his gardens
and conservatories. Most estates are growing as many vegetables as
possible to supply the many hospitals and the Fleet, and girls are
helping very much in this. A great deal has been done by work in
allotments, plots of land taken up by town dwellers and cultivated. In
one part of South Wales alone 40,000 allotments have been worked and
the allotment holders are organizing themselves co-operatively for
the purchase of seed, etc. We have Governmental powers now not only to
enable Local Authorities to secure unused land for allotments, but to
compel farmers to cultivate all their ground. We have fixed a price
for wheat for five years, and a minimum wage for the agricultural man
and woman.
The girls on the land improve in health and increase in weight. The
work is not only of supreme usefulness to the country--we have the
submarine ceaselessly gnawing at our shipping and making our burden
heavier--so we must produce everything possible. It has improved the
physique of our girls--they like it, and many will permanently adopt
it. Our Board of Agriculture is also encouraging, for the benefit of
the country woman, the formation of Women's Institutes, like those in
Canada and America.
In the Lord Mayor's Procession in London, on November 9, 1917, with
the men-in-arms of all our great Commonwealth of Nations, with the
Turks and the captured German aeroplanes and guns, the munition girls
and the Land girls marched. No group in all that great array had
a warmer welcome from our vast crowds than our sensibly clothed,
healthy, happy and supremely useful Land girls.
WAR SAVINGS--THE MONEY BEHIND THE GUNS
"You cannot have absolute equality of sacrifice in a war. That is
impossible. But you can have equal readiness to sacrifice from all.
There are hundreds of thousands who have given their lives, there are
millions who have given up comfortable homes and exchanged them for
a daily communion with death. Multitudes have given up those whom
they loved best. Let the nation as a whole place its comforts,
its luxuries, its indulgences, its elegances, on a national altar,
consecrated by such sacrifices as these men have made."
--THE PRIME MINISTER.
"Deep down in the heart of every one of us there is the spirit of
love for our native land, dulled it may be in some cases, perhaps
temporarily obscured, by hardship, injustice and suffering, but it is
there and it remains for us to touch the chord which will bring it to
life; once aroused it will prove irresistible."
--Sir R.M. KINDERSLEY, K.B.E.
CHAPTER IX
WAR SAVINGS--THE MONEY BEHIND THE GUNS