Women and War Work Part 18

In the readjustments in industry that must come there will be temporary displacements, and the money invested will be invaluable to those affected. In our great task of reorganizing industries, of renovating and repairing, of building up new works and adding to our productiveness, finance is all-important. We shall need large sums for the development of our industry, for the transferring of war work back to peace pursuits, for the opening up of new industries and work, for the development of trade abroad and the selfish using up of resources that could be conserved, makes the work harder--might even, if extravagantly large, cripple us seriously at the end of this struggle.

The sacrifices of our men can achieve military victory, but weakness and self-indulgence at home can take the fruits of their victories away.

Those who are working and saving in our War Savings Movement are so convinced of its value, not only to the state, but to the individual, and for the character of our people, that they have expressed the very strongest conviction that it should go on after the War, and it will probably remain in our reconstruction.

We have also urged the wisdom of saving for the children's education and for dots for daughters, so that our young women may have some money in emergencies, or something of their own on marriage, and both of these are being done.

The great problem of education bulks very large in our reconstruction schemes. A new Education Bill for England and Wales has been prepared by Mr. Fisher--and his appointment is in itself a sign of our new att.i.tude. He is Minister of Education and is really an educationist, having been Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield University when given the appointment. His Bill puts an end to that stigma on English education, the half-time system in Lancashire, and raises the age for leaving school to what it has been in Scotland for some years--sixteen years of age. It provides greater opportunities for secondary and technical training and improves education in every way. Its pa.s.sage, or the pa.s.sage of a still better Bill, is essential for any real work in reconstruction.

There are other schemes of education being planned and considered, and women are working with men on the education committee of the Ministry of Reconstruction.

The land question is all-important in reconstruction. We have fixed a minimum price for wheat for five years, as well as minimum wages for the labourers on land, men and women, and we have schemes and land for the settlement of soldiers. It is safe to predict that agriculture will be better looked after than it was before the war, and that we have learned a valuable lesson on food production, and the value of being more self-supporting.

There are people who talk airily and foolishly of "revolutions after the war"--of great labour troubles, of exorbitant and impossible demands, of irreconcilable quarrels. These people are themselves the creators and begettors of trouble, and mischievous in the highest degree. They belong, though they are much less attractive, to the same category as the person who tells you that the moral regeneration of the world is coming from this great war.

The "revolutionists" have to learn that there is no need to have any such crises happen, that they can only happen if we are foolish beyond belief and conception--for we have learned in this war how great and ample is the common meeting ground of all of us, how impossible it is for anyone to believe that we, who have fought together, suffered and lost together, while our men have died together, cannot find in consideration of claims enough common sense and wisdom to prevent any such disaster.

And one wonders where the people are going to be found who are going to be so unjust to the workers as to provide any reason for such dangers to be feared, for we know one thing in the war, that in the trenches, on the sea, behind the trenches and carrying on at home, the workers have done the greater part--and they, in their turn, know all others have borne their share. Out of such common knowledge and the consciousness that the practical work of democracy is to raise its people more and more, we shall have not revolution, but evolution of the best kind. And the moral regeneration of the world will come if we reconstruct the one thing that matters most and that is fundamental to all--ourselves--and it will not come if we do not. When one has said everything there is to be said of schemes and hopes of reconstruction--about the schemes for better homes, and a great housing scheme is wisely one of the foundation schemes of our reconstruction, for which plans are now being prepared, about schemes for the care of children, about schemes for endowment of motherhood, which are exercising the minds of many of our women, you are back again to the individual. When you think of education schemes, and schemes for teaching national service to the young, of work to teach care and thrift, you are back again to the problem of creating character.

When you go into the great world of industry and its problems, of care of the workers in health and sickness, of securing justice and full opportunities, of developing and wisely using our resources, again you return to the individual.

When you want to make the art and beauty of life accessible to all, you come back to the question as to the individual's desire for it and appreciation of it.

Schemes in theory may be perfect--reconstruction may be planned without a flaw--but what does that help if we as individuals are blind and selfish?

The regeneration of the world cannot come from the sacrifice of our men alone, or even of some of us at home. The few may save countries and do great things, but the work of reconstruction rests on everybody. Nations are made up of individuals, and a nation cannot hope for moral and social regeneration except through individual self-denial, self-sacrifice and service.

It is in our own hearts and our own minds that the great task of reconstruction must be done.

The greatest task of reconstruction for most of us is to make all our actions worthy of our highest self--to bring to the problems that confront us, not one detached and prejudiced bit of us, but the whole mind and spirit of ourselves--the best of us always in unity.

That is life's greatest task, and calls for all we have to give, and all we are. There lies true reconstruction and the hope of all the world.

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ARMS AND THE MAP

A STUDY IN NATIONALITIES AND FRONTIERS

BY IAN CAMPBELL HANNAH, M.A., D.C.L.

This work, which has had a large sale in England, will be invaluable when the terms of peace begin to be seriously discussed. Every European people is reviewed and the evolution of the different nationalities is carefully explained. Particular reference is made to the so-called "Irredentist" lands, whose people want to be under a different flag from that under which they live.

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VISIONS AND REVISIONS

A BOOK OF LITERARY DEVOTIONS

BY JOHN COWPER POWYS

This volume of essays on Great Writers by the well-known lecturer was the first of a series of three books with the same purpose as the author's brilliant lectures; namely, to enable one to discriminate between the great and the mediocre in ancient and modern literature: the other two books being "One Hundred Best Books" and "Suspended Judgments."

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