"NOT SO QUIET—"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20596, 21 June 1930, Page 25 (Supplement)

"NOT SO QUIET—"

BT ELSIE K. MORTON.

A WOMAN'S WAR-BOOK.

" What is to happen to women like me when this war ends—if it ever ends?! I am 21 years of ago, .yet I know nothing of life but death, fear, blood and tho sentimentality that glorifies these things in tho name of patriotism. I watch my own mother stupidly, deliberately, though unthinkingly, for sho is a, kind woman, encouraging tho sons of othfr women to kill their brothers; I seo my own father, a gentlo creature, who would not willingly Jiurt a fly, applaud tho latest scientist to invent a mechanical device to crush his fellow beings to pulp in their thousands. And my generation watches these thing 3 and marvels at the blind folly of it, helpless to make its immaturo voico heard above tho insensate clamour ■of tho old ones, who cry, ' Kill! kill! kill!' unceasingly." It is timo we had it—war through woman's eyes. The world has been deluged with war-books written by men, telling the truth about war. Hero is pne by a woman, not a story, " for one cannot .mako a story of an experience that ■jis rotten to tho core with wickedness. It £ells simply of one of those women who went to France to give their services Sor England during the Great War, and knew not what sho did."

This is a book that should not bo opened by any woman unwilling to faco (the stark truth about war as experienced by a, sister woman. Grim, revolting, coarse, and crude to tho uttermost degree t—yet war through tho eyes of a woman. jSho went to France as a V.A.D. ambulance driver, an ignorant, innocent girl jfrom a comfortable English home, bent on " doing her bit." She found herself in a hell of filth, starvation, overwork, despotic tyranny that crushed the very life and soul of its victims. She battled with deadly terror, learned to drive her ambulance-load of bleeding, broken men through pitch-black night over shell-torn roads; learned even to face tho norvewracking horror of air-raids while driving; learned to do the most revolting jobs without protest—learned, alas, to tolerate the vilest blasphemy and coarseness in. daily intercourse with her fello.w-workers, and in the learning, all tho grace and hope and beauty of girlhood died within her. • "Doing Her Bit."

And her mother and. father in England, • swelling with pride, went on telling their friends how " Nellie loved to bo in it. . . Somewhere in Franco, you know. » . . doing her bit. Flucky? Yes, but loves it. Wouldn't keep out of it, proud to do her bit for the Old Flag—proud to do her bit, God bless her!" And Nellie in Franco: " Oh, God, how shall I carry on ? They've made me a heroine, ona of England's Splendid Women, and I'm shaking with fright, I can't hold tho wheel—l'm going mad, mad, mad! Shrieks of torn bodies, screams of men growing louder and louder, shrieking down tho noise of tho engine. . . . Tell them that you liato it, that you are terror-stricken, that all tho ideals and beliefs you ever had have crashed' about your gun-deafened ears, that you want to crawl ignominiously home, away from these painful,"'writhing things that onca were men, theso' shattered, tortured faces that dumbly demand what it's all about, in Christ's name—that you want to find a place 'where life is quiet and beautiful as it was before the world turned khaki and blood-red, that'you want to creep into a refuge whero there is love instead of hate—tell them these things, and they will reply on pale mauve deckle-edged paper calling you a silly, hysterical little girl—" you must stick to it, darling, because England is so proud of her bravo daughters." •

So she sticks to it month after month, until at last, she reaches breaking point and goes home, wearing the overcoat with i?,s dark stain where the head of her beloved girl-chum had lain the night she was killed.

But slip returns to France. War-weary, nerve-strained, soul-crushed and exhausted, she is hounded back by those shocked patriots, her parents and maiden- aunty becauso her remaining at home unmaimed and seemingly fit would have had such a bad effect on their recruiting meetings .. . and then the end. "Her soul died under a radiant silver moon in the spring of 1918 on tho side of a blood-spattered trench. Looking deep into those eipotioir less eyes one wondered if they had suffered much before the soul had left them. Her face held an expression of resignation, as though she had ceased to hope that the end might come." Threadbare " Glory.' 1

So much for war as seen by one woman, a woman broken in body and soul in the seeing. The book will be criticised, censured, will inevitably offend by reason of its coarseness, but if it helps in even small dogree to shatter tho old-time illusion to swell the growing tide of loathing and abhorrence of war, then it is well that it lias been written.

Too long have women submitted themselves to the horror and tyranny of war, to the age-old parrot cry " So long as there is human nature, thero will be war." For thousands of years we havo been trained to think of the " glory" of war, the splendour of patriotism, and in these things, in the courso of ages, women have schooled their aching hearts to find consolation.

But we women of to-day, remembering our dead, seeing around us in broken lives and maimed bodies tho ghastly aftermath of war, seeing war itself at last in its horror and loathliness, shall we not havo something to say in reply to that fools' cry of the ages? We are told that war, though m itself a vilo and hideous thing, is justified in some measure because it calls forth all the hidden splendour and courage and nobility of men. Is it necessary to plunge a world in a tide of blood, to wreck a million homes, to imperil civilisation, in order to prove that men and women can still live and die as heroes? Did wo ourselves not have proof of it in tho awful days of 1918, when pestilence and death swept over our land, when men and women faced death night and day, when men left their comfortable homes night after night to dig graves for the dead, until their hands were blistered and bleeding, when women watched beside tho beds of dying waifs and strays gathered in from tho highways and byways? working and watching, they, too, were often stricken, and they died as noblv as any soldier on (lio field of battle 'But it did not take war to teach them how to die, as Christ died, for tho sake of their follow men. Peace Pacts and Poison Oas. Yet even now, though women by tho thousand know war for what it is, having passed through its fires, we arc lagging, we are not yet articulate. While men, arbiters of the fato of the world, talk year after year of peace pacts and limitalion of armies and navies, other men are still permitted to work in laboratories inventing new poison gases, perfecting new devices for human slaughter moio deadly than any yet conceived. liow long) oh women, are we going to permit this tempting of God, this preparation for further breaking of His stern command, "Thou shalt not lull! Until tho flame 3 break forth once more ? And then will wo onco moro send our pons, husbands, and brothers to tho hell of war, and talk of the nobility of sacrifice ? It has been said again and again, that if thero is another world war, civilisation itself will perish. If civilisation permits another world-war, it will desoryo to perish*