sh
womanhood, and it seemed to say, "We hate war as no man can ever hate
it, but it has been forced upon us all, so we, too, want to take our
share in it."

THE WORD OF WOMAN

But long before July 17, 1915, woman's part in this war began. It began
on August 5, 1914, when the first hundred thousand of our voluntary army
sprang into being as by a miracle. The miracle (if I am asked to account
for it) had its origin in the word of woman. Without that word we should
have had no Kitchener's Army, for "on the decision of the women, above
everything else, lay the issues of the men's choice." {*}

* The Times.

It needs little imagination to lift, as it were, the roofs off a hundred
homes, and see and hear what was going on there in those early days
of the war, after the clear call went out over England, "Your King and
Country need you."

In the little house of a City clerk, married only a year before, the
young wife is saying, "Yes, I think you ought to go, dear. It's rather
a pity, so soon after the boy was born... just as you were expecting
a rise, too, and we were going to move into that nice cottage in the
garden suburb. But, then, it will be all for the best, and you mustn't
think of me."

Or perhaps it is early morning in the flat of a young lawyer on the day
he has to leave for the front. He is dressed in his khaki, and his
wife, who is busying about his breakfast, is rising to a sublime but
heartbreaking cheerfulness for the last farewell. "Nearly time for you
to go, Robert, if you are to get to the barracks by six.... Betty? Oh,
no, pity to waken her. I'll kiss her for you when she awakes and say
daddy promised to bring her a dolly from France.... Crying? Of course
not I Why should I be crying?... Good-bye then I Good-bye!..."

Or perhaps it is evening in a great house in Belgravia, and Lady
Somebody is saying adieu to her son. How well she remembers the day
he was born! It was in May. The blossom was out on the lilacs in the
square, and all the windows were open. How happy she had been! He had
a long fever, too, when he was a child, and for three days Death had
hovered over their house. How she had prayed that the dread shadow would
pass away! It did, and now that her boy has grown to be a man he comes
to her in his officer's uniform to say,... Ah, these partings! They
are really the death-hours of their dear ones, and the women know it,
although, like Andromache, they go on "smiling through their