Read Ebook: The Altar of Freedom by Rinehart Mary Roberts

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We forget that the German we know has come here to escape the very thing that has wrecked the old world; that in coming to this land of the free he has followed an ideal as steadily as back in the fatherland his kindred are following after the false gods of hate and war.

He is German, but he is not Prussian, although he may be Prussian-born.

Then, too, women know too much now of war to enable them to make the sacrifice easily. War has become more than a word. It is become reality, and only its horrors live for them. And so far but little emphasis has been laid on the great things for which we will fight. We talk in numbers. We stress the fine points of international law. We think of bond issues and submarines and guns--and the women sit and roll bandages and brood, and care little for all these things. Why not something of the real reason for this war, of the hatred for ruthless cruelty, the contempt for our rights, the scorn of the little nations, and of the privilege of helping to bring back to a world that is destroying itself the priceless boon of peace?

How afraid we are of airing our love of our country! How shame-facedly we rise to the national anthem! How many excuses a man will give for going to war, except the fundamental one that he loves his country and is going to stick by her though the heavens fall!

Little boys, these men of ours, hiding their deepest feelings with a gibe!

Some things we women must learn, and now is the time to learn them. Sacrifice is an old story to women. They have always known it. But not sacrifice to an abstract ideal. Sacrifice to an ideal, then,--and personal service.

That hurts, but it is true. This is no time for evasion. And it is not because I have made my sacrifice that I say it. It is because, unless we all give, unless our army is large enough, those who have failed in their duty are sending the best youth of the country to death. It will be murder.

In return for what we give, we women of America have the right to demand certain things. First of all we can and must demand time that our boys may be trained. We have taken a long time to go into this war. And because the country would not believe that we must eventually be involved, we have lost precious years.

When, now nearly two years ago, I came back from the war in Europe, I brought with me two convictions: First, that the German Government had thrown aside its mask of law and order, and was following war along lines so atrocious that it must be checked or civilization dies. Second, after conferring with men high in the Allied Governments, that sooner or later we should inevitably find ourselves involved: it was but a matter of time.

I came home terrified. I tried to talk about it. It seemed to me that we could not sit back unarmed, with only our brave little army,--less than a single day's losses in battle over there,--and do nothing.

But I was as a voice crying in the wilderness. I was not alone, of course, in my wilderness. There were many, but the country heard us not. It listened to Belgium, and sent aid. It helped the pathetic little French orphans. It shook its head over the Roll of Honor in the "Illustrated London News," and it went to church on Sundays and thanked God that we were out of it.

An obstructive Congress, instructed from its constituencies, refused to listen to talk of preparation. The Army tried to get a hearing, and the Navy tried, but both failed. It is not the fault of the Democratic Party that we are to-day as we are, although, insomuch as our President is head of the Army and of the Navy, it is the Democratic Party which will control the war.

It was, indeed, that stanch old Democrat, Thomas Jefferson, who said:--

"We must train and classify the whole of our male citizens and make military instruction a regular part of collegiate education. We can never be safe until this is done."

Later on he went still further:--

It is the fault of a great people who have forgotten or have never learned that the world is only one tenth as large as it was when this Republic was founded. And that, instead of being isolated from this war, the conflict is and has been from its beginning but just over the edge of the horizon.

What else must we demand, now that the war-beast is creeping closer, when his head is reared above the skyline? What else have we a right to ask, we women who cannot sit in the seats of the mighty, but to whom the nation must turn for soldiers, now and in future generations?

We can ask this: This country of ours has been hag-ridden by politics. We have the right now to demand that party lines be forgotten, and that the nation act as a whole, politically; that the best man serve, regardless of his party.

This must not be a "party" war. If any man put his party before his country, that man is a traitor. We are no longer Republican or Democrat or Progressive. We are Americans.

Not until universal service had removed the war in England from party lines was there anything adequate done. Then, and only then, did England begin to put forth her best efforts.

And this we can ask:--

This must not be a bureaucrat's war.

Civil administration in the field has always failed. War is a highly specialized business, the most highly specialized business in the world. And we who give our best have the right to demand the best. We can have no bungling.

The English Field Marshal Wolseley, writing of our Civil War as a military expert, said: "The Northern prospects did not begin to brighten until Mr. Lincoln, in March, 1864, with that unselfish intelligence which distinguished him, abdicated his military functions in favor of General Grant."

War is not a thing for amateurs in high places.

If our own history means anything to us, if the tragic experience of England has taught us anything, it is that the army in the field should not be a Washington-controlled army, beyond the supplying of men, arms, and equipment.

Do you know what a company commander must do in the day's work? He must enroll and recruit his company to a strength of one hundred and fifty men. He must get them clothed, equipped, and fed, and he must keep them clothed, equipped, fed, doctored, sanitated, cheerful, and amused.

Any woman who has tried to do all of these things for one stirring lad may multiply these by a hundred and fifty, and no maternal instinct to help out, and see that the company commander has a full day even in peace times.

Then he has to drill his men, and in war he has to lead them. He must give them every chance for life if he can. He must die with them if it be necessary. But he must do with them the thing he has been assigned to do.

Is that work for the amateur?

In the Mexican and Civil Wars our professional fighters were Indian fighters and frontiersmen, splendid and hardy men accustomed to hardship. But they were not conversant with modern military methods. The result was civilian officers, taken from shops and offices, and the further result, in the Civil War, that a struggle which might have ended in a year took four.

But we did not learn anything from that lesson. For we are about to commit again the same folly, and from the same necessity.

Then, again, we have the right to demand enough time. Because we have wasted two years is no reason for hurry now, when haste means sending our boys untrained against a highly trained enemy.

Do you know that McDowell was urged to take his volunteers into action by popular clamor and against his better judgment before their three-months' enlistment expired, and that the result was the unhappy battle of Bull Run?

All this means but one thing to me, a mother. It means time to train our boys and properly equip them. And it means professional military leaders.

And this is pertinent now, because what we have done before we may do again. In the Civil War each State was called on for a certain number of regiments. Prominent men then raised these regiments, and they were officered by local civilians. That was not such a hardship then, because our boys were to face other regiments recruited and officered in the same way.

The Plattsburg idea has borne abundant fruit. It has shown three things:--

You who considered prayerfully the best doctor for your child when he was ill, are you going now to place his life in unskilled hands?

This morning I stopped at one of the recruiting stations and talked to the clear-eyed young soldier on duty.--They are a fine lot, this little regular army of ours. I like to talk to them. They look me in the eye. Do you remember teaching your little boys to face the world, head up?--This young soldier had been seven years in the army. He had one more year, and unless there was a war, he was going to quit then. He liked it, but he had done his bit. No, there were not many men applying. Yes, he guessed we should need all we could get.

Then he gave me this appeal to the young patriots of the country, flaming now with the fire of that highest emotion of all, love of country:--

"Men wanted under thirty-five years of age, for the United States Army. Special inducements to Pharmacists, Musicians, Bandsmen, Electricians, Clerks, Bakers, Cooks, Barbers, Teamsters, Carpenters, Blacksmiths, Horseshoers, and other Mechanics."

God of our fathers! Not special inducements to Patriots, Men who love their country, Men who believe in liberty, Men who hate cruelty, Men who would avenge Belgium, Free Men, Fighting Men!

And, farther down, it is not, "Come and do your bit," "Your country calls you," or "Save the Flag." It offers, forsooth, "a chance to see the world." Those are the very words!

So to-day we are on the edge of war, or at war. And we ask, not for boys of fire and steel, but cooks and teamsters and blacksmiths.

But the American boy has imagination, if our War Department has not. And he is coming, in his thousands and tens of thousands.

Nothing can hold him back,--not danger, not inadequate preparation, not anything under the blue sky where once he sailed his kites and sent up his Fourth-of-July rockets. Not even the mother he loves.

What are we going to do, then, we mothers, when the tumult and the shouting have died, and the long wait comes? We will pray. The churches of France are full of kneeling women. And we will work.

There is no spectacular work for mothers in a war. They cannot drive ambulances, or guide aeroplanes, although they are capable of doing both. There will be no need of the wig-wagging that some women are so painfully learning! But they will work for the Red Cross, and they will make up such little packets as only mothers can make,--toothbrushes and chocolates and fresh socks and gingerbread, and a Bible and playing-cards and cigarettes.

And in between times, they will wait, in that quiet that is not peace.

That is what millions of women are doing just now, while you are reading this.

There are two wars being waged to-day. One is the war of hate, and one is the war of love. And this last is the bitter war, because it is being fought in women's hearts, between their fears and their patriotism. I know.

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