Playing with Food Prices

The Popular English Pastime: Playing with Food Prices

By Lacey Amy

From Saturday Night magazine, Toronto, Canada, 25 November 1916.

Digitized by Doug Frizzle, 25 September, 2017 for Stillwoods.Blogspot.Ca

Apology – This entry has been created from very old microfilm from a very old magazine. Certain areas of the graphic are unclear. I have endeavoured to reason at the missing parts of words. If there are errors, or if the meaning is not clear, it is my fault./drf

Scene I.

ONE chilly, but bright October afternoon on the Embankment below Charing Cross, I came on a curious crowd. It was in three parts, distinct in formation but connected in idea. On the pavement on the river side was a casual throng of idlers searching for entertainment on a holiday afternoon. Half a hundred yards distant, browsing in that air of detachment peculiar to their kind, was a squad of policemen, sixty or seventy strong.

The third portion, the centre of interest, was a medley of humanity splashed along the north side of the street, a mob, a clutter of Eastenders, made up of a dozen women, most of them with babies in their arms or in “prams” before them; half a dozen men who looked a bit sheepish but dogged, and a half hundred boys. I could imagine every street gamin within sight waving on his companions at the promise of a procession with a banner for everyone.

Without the banners it might have been only the incipience of a street riot, or a cinema queue. With the banners it became a tremendous Uplift Gathering, the Great English Public Speaking to its Legislators.

Everyone had a banner—most of the lads two—and a taxi load was left over after all hands were filled. “Down with the Milk Trust.” howled the placard of a seven year-old trust-buster. “My Father is in the Trenches. Give his Babies Milk,” pleaded a girl in Saturday-afternoon silk stockings and a keen eye for eligible young men. “Must Our Babies Starve?” demanded an aggressive female who, if she were not a spinster, was breaking all the laws of Nature. And red-nosed female hawkers bawled out “The Women’s Dreadnought.” Sylvia “Painkhoorst’s” mouthpiece.

It was very amusing. . . I went home and had milk as usual in my coffee.

Scene II.

TWO nights later. My coffee steamed before me and I reached mechanically for the sugar. It was not there. I rang, and my landlady entered apologetically. All afternoon she had gone from store to store begging a half pound of sugar. At ten groceries she had failed. My pet aversion, unsweetened coffee, faced me.

Ahem! It was coming too near home to be amusing. However, by Monday the Government would probably have released another supply.

Scene III.

WITH the evening paper propped against the cruet (there are still cruets in England) I was trying to while away my solitary meal without cursing the inconveniences of war. My landlady had just set before me a disturbingly small helping of mutton chop. Gradually it broke in through the Dobrudja muddle and the menace of temporary insufficiency that she had not left the room. I looked up, smiling invitation.

“I’m sorry, sir. but I believe I’ll ‘ave to ask a little mo’ for the meals.” She was stammering, twiddling with the other end of the tablecloth. “You see things have gone up so—twenty-five per cent since you came. (I wish the Government would stop issuing figures for the common people.) That bit of meat cost one and five to-day, an’ the herrin’ was fo’pence. An’ butter’s two shillings, an’ bread—”

Didn’t I know it? Hadn’t I been collecting prices for this article, with the result that I knew nothing short of stealing her supplies would enable her to feed me so well at such a price? Now I’m paying five shillings a week more—and the end has scarcely begun to begin.

No longer is it merely amusing, no longer merely temporarily inconvenient. The H. C. of L. (high cost of living) has become more than a literary treatise.

THE paraders were justified. Milk is now twelve cents a quart and gathering wind for another flight Also it is neither rich, nor good measure, not pasteurized, nor even clean. Newspapers and street agitation have effected nothing, despite the profits declared by some rural dairies on eight cent milk. Big companies have bought up the small, and forced those reluctant to sell by offering unasked to the farmer a price beyond what the farmer ever dreamed of.

The joke—in which the public does not share—is that the farmer learned quickly. His winter contracts now call for nine cents a quart, which means that twelve cents is waiting only until a new price list can be printed.

Sugar is not a sweet subject to contemplate. It will be recalled that the Government took over stocks and importations at the commencement of the war. The only visible results are that sugar is now doled out in homeopathic doses by an independent grocer, who sees in it the opportunity of securing new customers. It is still only twelve cents a pound—if you can get it.

In his most liberal moments, no grocer permits more than two pounds to leave his store with one order, and always other goods must be purchased. Usually the supply is a half pound at a time, and for that fifty cents to a dollar must be spent. Some co-operative societies have issued sugar tickets, a hole punched at each purchase.

And there are weeks when entire villages are sugarless. This summer no jam was put down in private houses, and all kinds of recipes are abroad for putting down fruit without sugar. I have tasted some of them and am living on other “sweets.”

Before the war sugar was four cents a pound. Beef has gone from twenty-one to thirty-four cents, butter from twenty-eight to fifty and more (most families arc content with margarine, a tasteless and perishable, but satisfactory, substitute at sixteen to twenty-four cents a pound), cheese from sixteen to twenty-eight; eggs from three cents to whatever you look able to pay, up to ten cents; and tea from forty to fifty-six cents for the cheap varieties. Bread is twenty-one cents a four-pound loaf, and at that is cheaper than in Toronto, I understand. Before the war it was eight cents. And it has but begun its climb. I see that on Saturday wheat rose eight per cent., making forty-five per cent. in four months. It is now higher than in the past hundred years. Potatoes are four cents a pound and six cents is promised.

Fish, a hand-to-mouth article of food in this insular country, fluctuates from day to day. On Saturday soles were seventy-eight cents a pound wholesale, and cod (with head and insides) twenty-seven cents. A dinner for three shillings or less takes no account of any fish but herring and haddock, with now and then a taste of hake or whiting. Many fish stores have closed owing to the uncertainty of supply.

Fruit and confectionery are luxuries of which to dream. In a store window the other day peaches were sixty cents apiece, nectarines thirty-six cents, small melons sixty cents, grapes a dollar-and-a-half a pound, pineapples eighty-four cents, pears thirty-six cents. Fruit of this kind is usually English, than which there is none better grown. For some time oranges were not on the market, owing to Government shipping regulations, but latterly these restrictions have been removed and fair oranges are five cents each. I have yet to see, even at seven or eight cents each, an apple that would be tempting to a Canadian at home.

English confectionery never did compete with the kind sold in a hundred shops in Toronto, either in price or quality. After a study of windows I cannot find the cheapest stuff under twenty-eight cents a pound—not equal to the fifteen cent varieties in Toronto—and bonbons are not eatable under a dollar a pound. The kind obtainable at fifty cents so readily in Toronto when I left is not to be had here at any price, but a fair imitation costs a dollar-and-a-half.

Coal (soft, mind you) is nine dollars a ton, and is held there only by the Government regulation of prices at the mine; the retailer asks what he pleases. Matches, once four cents a dozen boxes, are now eighteen cents. Tomatoes have never been below twelve cents this summer; and at that they do not take the place of the Canadian kind since they will not ripen in the open save in the extreme south. I have dared to mention here tomatoes ripening outside up at Fort Vermilion and in the Yukon, but comment like that slides off the contented Englishman.

I have begun to prepare for winter—and that to a Canadian brings visions of central heating. An ordinary coal-oil heater costs six dollars, and a small electric heater which I am sure I could purchase in Toronto at eight dollars was going to cost me thirty-eight dollars. For anything that savors of modernity it would pay one to visit America on a shopping expedition. It is lese majeste to introduce into England a new system of heating.

Restaurant meals that used to cost a dollar-and-a-half have been lowered in calibre and raised in price to a dollar-eighty-five cents; and I see that even the “dosser” (real English for “tramp”) is asked to pay sixteen cents instead of twelve for bed and breakfast at Lord Rowton’s lodging houses. So where is one to lay his head?

If you own a car—you probably don’t unless you are a military official, the Red Cross having requisitioned it or forced you to sell it in self defence—your gasoline asks for sixty-eight cents a gallon, with an additional twelve cents to the Government for letting you buy any.

Sixty-eight per cent. is the Government estimate of the increase in the cost of living since the war began.

Only threatened strikes on railways and in mines forced the Government finally to recognize conditions. But the realization of the necessity for action is but the first of a dozen steps before action is taken. Some of the Government’s best friends (and remember that the Government is coalition) are firm in the belief that a report will be made and stem measures taken—if the war lasts long enough.

Up to the present the only effect on prices is to boost them, except where a threatened investigation into the hoarded tea frightened the shippers into reducing prices. A Cabinet Minister two weeks ago stilled an incipient rebellion by stating that sugar was cheaper here than in America—in spite of the fact that sugar at that time was quoted at eight cents in New York and Toronto. One of the Government Departments went so far as to wave a reproving hand at the farmers. “Oh, fie’” it gently upbraided. “Now you really shouldn’t charge more than eight cents a quart for milk, you know. We may—um—we may have to consider doing something in the matter if you keep on “ A Wheat Commission merely bemoans the high price and is contradicted in its findings by everyone concerned. A Food Prices Commission could do little more than advise a meatless day a week. And the House towered to grand heights of patriotism in demanding of the munition workers—who are at it in the Woolwich Arsenal twelve hours a day—that they eschew holidays. After which it hastily packed its bag for a six weeks’ holiday of its own.

As this is being written the South Wales Miners’ Federation threaten to organize a great strike unless the Government takes full control of the food supplies; and the Scottish Mine Workers also make similar threats. Profiteering has passed all endurance in this country, but the trouble is that wealthy M. Ps. and members of the Lords are interested financially in almost every industry, and of course block action.

Hands Across the Sea! If we could only reach that ideal now there’d be one hand going empty and returning fulL Personally mine would return with Canadian bonbons, Canadian apples—and a whiff of Canadian sunlit air.

The people who are suffering most in England now, and who will continue to do so after the war, are those who live upon unearned incomes. A man with an income of $50,000 a year from his estates or stocks in England is receiving only $25,000 a year, as 40 per cent, goes to the Government and the other 10 per cent, is taken up by the increased cost of living.

The price of food, according to the Duke of Marlborough. who keeps up a big household, has increased 100 per cent, since the war began. A correspondent for a New York paper finds that eggs are ten cents apiece in London.

Regarding “The Canadian Incubus.”

Barrie. 14th November. 1916.

Editor. “Saturday Night ‘.

DEAR SIR,—I have read with amazement and considerable indignation an article entitled “The Canadian Incubus.” by Lacey Amy, in your issue of November 11th—amazement at some of the statements made in the article, and indignation at its unfair and ungenerous tone toward Canadian women in England. Will Mr. Amy give the name of the “great London paper” which stated that “hundreds of thousands of Canadian women have followed their husbands to England,” and also the date of the issue in which this statement appeared? And will he also give the address of any boarding house “in and around London.” where fifteen dollars a week is asked for “board and one semi-furnished room”? I should inspect such a boarding house, when I return to England and also to see the people who are foolish enough to pay such a price for such accommodation—although one would think that an Asylum for the Feeble Minded would be a more appropriate place of residence for them than a boarding house. I enclose the address of a house in the Bloomsbury district of London (well known to many Canadians for years past) where a comfortably furnished room with excellent board may be obtained for twenty-eight shillings per week. These are the rates which were asked and paid last August. I also enclose the address of an excellent boarding house in Bayswater, where the terms are thirty to thirty-two shillings a week. And there are many others “in and around London” equally good, and at equally reasonable rates.

As to the “sad Canadian housewife” who paid nine cents apiece for eggs, her place is certainly with the inmates of the fifteen dollars a week, semi-furnished boarding house. The “Weekly Times” of October 27th quotes the price of eggs in London as three shillings and sixpence a dozen, and yet the “sad Canadian housewife” was “forced” to pay at the rate of four and six a dozen at least a month earlier!

In a paragraph concerning work in England for Canadian women, the following astonishing statement appears: “Frankly, don’t believe the appeals which fill the English papers. As the editor of a London paper said to me: ‘That is only one of the War Office frolics’.” Does Mr. Lacey Amy actually expect sane and intelligent Canadians to believe that the War Office publishes appeals in the English papers by way of a joke? They are much more likely to think that it is the editor of the London paper who is indulging in a “frolic”—at the expense of the credulous Mr. Lacey Amy.

One impression given by this article is that London is overcrowded with Canadians. The plain fact is, that even “at such a camp centre as Folkestone.” where Canadians are far more numerous in proportion to the general population than in London, the “little Dominion” which they form consists of (leaving out the troops) a floating population of from five to six hundred scattered through Folkestone and the adjoining towns and villages of Bandgate, Hythe, Sandling, Cheriton, etc., where the general population amounts to at least forty thousand. It is evident that the presence of the Canadians cannot affect conditions very seriously, and the fact that accommodation can be obtained without the least trouble in Folkestone and its neighborhood shows that there is no overcrowding. As to London, the Canadians there are leas than the proverbial “drop in the bucket.”

Some Canadian papers have taken up the cry that Canadians (and especially Canadian women) are not wanted in England. During a stay of twenty months in England, ending last August, the writer neither heard nor read any word or hint of such a thing either from English people or in English papers One read with astonishment the articles which appeared in Canadian papers on this subject, and one felt that Canadians were being made rather ridiculous by this outcry over a matter of which English people were apparently unconscious, and on which English papers, so far as one could judge, were making no comment whatever. Mr. Lacey Amy says “The newspapers on both sides of the water have endeavored to interrupt the stream.” I would again ask for the name of any responsible English paper and the date of the issue in which such an endeavor was made, as it would be both interesting and instructive to read it.

While prices have gone up very much in England, they have also risen rapidly in Canada, and one finds on returning, that the cost of living is quite as high here as in England. While loaf sugar (but no other kind) was sometimes difficult to get, and eggs and butter were very dear (especially eggs), no scarcity of food was felt, and some foods (bacon, for instance) were cheaper than in Canada.

Mr. Lacey Amy’s estimate of Canadian women in England, and the work they are doing, is so obviously unfair and prejudiced that it should not carry weight with any fair-minded reader of “Saturday Night.” It can only arouse indignation in those who know of the quiet useful work which Is being done in hospitals, soldiers’ clubs and canteens and also for the Red Cross and Field Comforts, by numbers of Canadian women in England—women whose hearts are torn with anxiety, and who find their greatest comfort in doing what they can to help In every work for the comfort and well-being of the soldiers. If any impartial and fair-minded Canadian writer would take up the question of the work which is being done by Canadian women in England—investigating thoroughly and carefully, and reporting honestly and fairly—the story he could tell would be one to make Canadians proud of their women He could write of the Canadian Women’s Club of Folkestone, for instance—of their work on behalf of the tubercular patients at Moore Barracks Hospital; of the Connaught Club for soldiers, where all the cooking of good home-made Canadian dishes—sometimes for as many as a hundred soldiers in one day—is done by the women of the Canadian Club; of the comfortable rest and recreation room which they have furnished, and the free canteen which they are operating for the benefit of the soldiers passing through the Canadian Casualty Assembly Centre at Folkestone—men just out of hospital who are in need of rest and comfort; of their devoted work in the many hospitals of the Shorncliffe area, and of their many activities for the benefit of the soldiers, of which time fails me to tell. He could speak of the valuable work done by Lady Drummond and her devoted hand of helpers in the Information Department of the Canadian Red Cross Society—of the help they give to anxious and bereaved Canadians gathering information for them, and of the unfailing kindness and sympathy with which (hat help Is given, to which the present writer desires to bear grateful personal testimony.

Mr. Lacey Amy has no word of praise or appreciation for any of these things. He is like a man walking by a mountain road, who has no eyes for the heights around him, but sees only the muddy spots on the path. He would judge all Canadian women by the actions of a few idle and foolish ones. He would also have us believe that Canadian soldiers are churlish and ungrateful, but the experience of the “average hospital visitor” has been that they are invariably courteous and friendly, and grateful for any little kindness, as well as brave and cheerful and patient in suffering.

If Mr. Lacey Amy’s article was written as the result of his personal experience, one can only conclude that he has been equally unfortunate in his choice of a boarding-house, in the soldiers he has met, and in the type of Canadian woman he has encountered, even “when tea-ing(!) at the home of one of England’s illustrious titled men!”

Yours truly.

MARY GRASETT.

Editor’s Note:—Mr. Amy, being in England, the Editor will endeavor to answer a number of Mrs. Grasett’s questions. First of all the “great London newspaper” spoken of is the “Daily News,” the date of which I am unable to give, though the clipping was in my hands in October and was referred to in the Front Page of this journal in the issue of October 14. I pass the subject of boarding houses as I have had no personal knowledge, but as Mr. Amy has been in England some two years or more he probably spoke by the book. As for the price of food products, eggs were quoted this week in London at ten cents each. This fact may be substantiated from press reports published in the New York “Times.” and New York “Post.” However, Mr. Walter Runciman’s speech in Parliament last week, in which he notified the public that there would be no more flour made from the pure grain; that more stringent measures would have to be taken in respect to the consumption of sugar; that the State control of potatoes was imminent, and finally that the Government might be compelled to put food tickets into force, is, I think, sufficient answer as to what position England is in with regard to food supplies. As to the reference to “one of the War Office’s frolics.” this Editor does not know the source of this remark (it came from one of the largest and most influential London dailies), but without Mr. Amy’s approval could scarcely make it public. As for Mr. Amy’s general information on matters in England, would state that he is a trained and experienced journalist with London newspaper connections.

Readers of the “Women’s Section” of Saturday Night are well aware that this journal has always attempted to do justice to the war work of Canadian women in England, not only through the page written by Miss Mary Macleod Moore, our special correspondent in London, but also by means of many minor reports of such endeavor. Mr. Amy does not doubt the extent and excellence of Canadian women’s work in England—he mere emphasizes what overseas authorities have already complained of—the presence in England of too many inadequately employed Canadian women.

The Canadian Incubus

The Canadian Incubus

By Lacey Amy

From Saturday Night magazine, Toronto, Canada, 11 November 1916.

Digitized by Doug Frizzle, 23 September, 2017 for Stillwoods.Blogspot.Ca

Apology – This entry has been created from very old microfilm from a very old magazine. Certain areas of the graphic are unclear. I have endeavoured to reason at the missing parts of words. If there are errors, or if the meaning is not clear, it is my fault./drf

WE were tea-ing at the home of one of England’s illustrious titled men, five Canadians and an equal number of English people, who are making themselves especially agreeable to Canadian soldiers and workers. Among the Canadians was a woman whose name will probably be emblazoned in the Canadian annals after the war as one of the self-sacrificing, expatriated office staff of a certain Canadian organization in London.

Into the conversation entered the name of a Canadian woman well known in London through her husband, a friend of our English host. Instantly I noted the head of my compatriot worker rise, and into her eyes came the hard light of the woman-in-the-same-set. For a minute or two she listened to a desultory account of the other’s last visit to London and of a certain war work in which she is interesting herself back in Canada.

“Pooh!” she snorted at last. “I’d rather hold up a lamp-post in Piccadilly than be lady mayoress of—” (naming the home city of the one being discussed).

I believed her. It was neither the kind of remark nor the tone to accept to any extent other than its limit. The impression that entered my mind—and I am sure it came to our hosts much the same, for they were obviously ill at ease—was of a woman whose presence in London was not at all on account of the work in which she happened to be concerned, but whose work was a mere excuse for her presence in London. Either that or she was willing to sneer at her native land to suit her perverted idea of what would please her English friends.

A few days later I entered the building in which are situated the offices of the organization through which she will undoubtedly claim social distinction upon her return to Canada after the war. A complete storey distant from the offices a blast of noisy chatter in female voices convinced me that it was no place for a man seeking information. I went elsewhere.

There are in London to-day—all over south-eastern England in fact—three kinds of Canadian women: those who come as part of the household of a resident Canadian whose work is in England, those who were sent from Canada for the distinct purpose of carrying on necessary work for the Canadian soldiers, and those who wish to give the appearance of the second class. There are no acknowledged idlers. Oh, dear, no.

The onlooker might rearrange the classes into those who have an excuse for being here and those who are a nuisance. I am inclined to think he would include in the better the entire third class and those who, like the Canadian woman instanced, are at work only to be near the centre of the excitement, “in the swim,” without giving critics a chance to associate them with their idle sisters.

What is the number of Canadian women in and around London I could only guess, and others might guess differently. What Londoners guess is what counts for Canada’s fair name. I have before me a statement of a great London paper that “hundreds of thousands of Canadian women have followed their husbands to England.” Of course, that is worthy of Hearst since there are less than two hundred thousand soldiers and a few hundred doctors and other officials here. The value of the estimate is in its bulk in the London mind, the implied criticism of Canadian common sense and patriotism.

One cannot censure such an estimate. The Canadian woman is almost as conspicuous here as her other half, not in numbers, but in her ubiquity and in her evident away-from-home-and-hurrah look when she is not wholeheartedly at work. Canadian women are everywhere about London—in the restaurants, on the streets, in the theatres. The Savoy, the Cecil, the Carlton, the Piccadilly, the Regent Palace and the Strand Palace are favorite meeting grounds for the inevitable afternoon tea, to which the Canadian in London has taken like a boy to the jam cupboard. A certain section of the city, Russell Square, that used to be called the American section, is now turned over in name to the boarding Canadians. And, of course, at such a camp centre as Folkestone, Canadian women—were they not often too anxious, in this country, to eschew that to which they have been prepared for that which seems a la mode—could form a little Dominion of their own.

The newspapers of both sides of the water have endeavored to interrupt the stream—handicapped in their efforts now and then by some “sob-squad” artist, with the widowed-mother and weeping-wife story that dampens handkerchiefs, pictures me a double-dyed villain compared with whom Pharaoh was chicken-hearted, and entirely ignores the question that really counts. No one has a deeper sympathy than I for the woman left at home to mourn; nobody could be more eager for the Canadian in whose lots in England than the English people, if conditions permitted even a doubt. But it is as impossible to justify the presence in England of the useless Canadian woman—the one who neither works nor brightens the home of a resident husband—as it is to support the plea that is actually being made by her English counterpart. That the wives of the soldiers at the front should be allowed to visit their husbands at their pleasure. It is as difficult to supply England with the necessary food and sustenance as it is France, and yet I venture to doubt that any Canadian woman will support such a ridiculous proposition.

The root of the trouble has two bunches. One class, which places itself entirely beyond the pale, consists of those who see in England at this time the height of their marital dreams. The other has a vague idea that in England they will be able to spend the week ends with their husbands or sons. That is a folly which even the ordinary brain should appreciate. I do know of Canadian women coming to England to see their husbands and having to hasten back to Canada to do it. Rightly enough, the War Office cannot clutter up its usefulness by considering anything but the prosecution of the war and the quickest relief of the soldiers. By a special arrangement they have made it possible now for the wife to return to Canada with the husband—if there is room, and if she is willing to put up with the accommodation.

The wife who imagines that she will be in touch in England with her soldier-husband is going to have a rude awakening. I have beside me the letter of a Canadian woman in which she complains that, although she arrived in England in early June, she has not yet seen her husband. And there are hundreds like her. There is no such thing as leave since the Somme offensive began, nor is there likely to be much of it for the rest of the war. England has discovered that leave is a much more recuperative measure for the harassed enemy than for the driving Allies. Two years of dragging warfare has altered methods of actively prosecuting the war, one of the discoveries being that it is more disastrous to coddle soldiers than to press them. Brutal as that statement may be, there is no reason why it should be left to the post-bellum annals. The battalions with the best records are those whose commanding officers adopted measures that might appeal to the Prevention of Cruelty societies as inhumane. It is a question of driving to victory or lounging to a draw; and the wives, I fear, have nothing whatever to do with it.

The “sob-squad” argument I once read from a reputable Toronto paper on behalf of the visiting Canadian woman, that her husband’s reason was despaired of unless she took up her abode in England to comfort him during his short leaves, was merely a dramatic staging of proof that the man should be discharged rather than that the woman should be brought to England. Soldiers of that kind—and there may be some so weak mentally—are better at home.

The Canadian woman who has faith that her ability, her willingness “to do anything,” or England’s gratitude to Canada and her need of woman workers, will find a place for her had better disillusion herself in Canada among friends than in England among strangers. Ability counts little, willingness less. I could mention a certain Canadian home, started in England with great splash and publicity, “a Canadian home for Canadian soldiers,” uncontrolled by the War Office, where ability is the last thing desired. Philanthropy is merely another name for advertisement sometimes.

There is no work in England for Canadian women. There is no assurance, even if work is obtained, that it will be permanent. England does not want women workers, however badly she might need them. I may have more to say on this another time. Frankly, don’t believe the appeals which fill the English papers. As the editor of a London paper said to me; “that is only one of the War Office frolics.” I could give the disillusionizing experiences of some Canadian women with a sincere desire to do war work.

I pick up a single issue of “The Times” and find in its Personal Column these appeals, each costing the advertiser about two dollars and a half:

“Two ladies would give services in munition-workers’ canteen or hostel. Resident. Can pay board if necessary.”

“Lady would do volunteer work or charitable work of any kind, and pay her own expenses. St. John certificates. Average capabilities.”

“Volunteer war work—Two ladies would give three days weekly to canteen or other war work, paying own expenses. Not London.”

And yet every day the papers are burdened with a cry for canteen workers. In desperation many Canadian women have become what is called hospital visitors. I can assure Canadian readers that the average hospital visitor in England has undertaken a thankless task. One reason is that it is recognized as a mere filler-in of time for women who feel bound to justify themselves. The second reason is that ninety per cent. of the Canadian boys would as soon take a dose of calomel as face the average hospital visitor. I am prepared to hear clamorous protests at this. I can only say that the intimacy of my connection with the boys places me in a position to know. I have the word of hundreds of them, given in moments of frankness. Also I have seen scores of them deliberately turn their backs and feign sleep when the hospital visitor looms in sight. It is a delicate question which I am more willing to put in print, I will admit than in words to the visitors themselves.

There are other unpleasant surprises for the Canadian woman who comes here with the idea that everything will be rosy for her. Right from the start she has a narrow path to walk to evade a reputation many of her sisters. I regret to say, have justly earned. Every day I am forced to agree that Satan is still the fond old entertainer of the idle.

But she is going to find, too, that her preconceived ideas of the cost of living in England need revision. I gather from what is even more convincing than the Government statement that the cost of living has advanced sixty-eight per cent. since the war began, that the Englishman is bewildered with the climb of prices. Even if the Canadian woman is able to overcome her scruples in other directions, she should come prepared to pay at least fifteen dollars a week for board and one semi-furnished room in and around London; and at that it is of a class she would scorn in Canada. Those who have visited England in the good old days when the best beef was twenty cents a pound, eggs thirty-five cents a dozen, and bread eleven cents a loaf—when sugar was not a luxury to be prayed for at night with the other blessings of Providence—should have heard a sad Canadian housewife here telling me of being forced to pay nine cents apiece for fresh eggs a month ago. We avoid eggs for breakfast. The details of English living are worth a special article later.

The presence of idle Canadian women in England cannot, I think be laid to sentiment. In forcing themselves on a country which finds it more difficult than most people know to secure its supplies they are replacing the higher sentiment by the lower. The scores of Canadian girls who sally forth to England to marry, or who marry soldiers just before departure from Canada and thereby think to justify their presence here, I would hand over to a more biting pen than mine. When the newspapers and Governments of both sides of the water have failed to stem the flood is there nothing else can be done? There is sign of a budding sense of proportions in Canada but the season for buds is backward. Can’t we force them?

The Eternal Snob.

THERE are certain inherent tendencies of human nature that nothing will ever change. However much the forms may vary, the essence of them remains the same. They are as immutable as the leopard’s spots or the Ethiop’s skin. You may denounce them, jeer at them, or, if you happen to be a sentimentalist, weep over them, but so long as the earth is populated by men and women nothing you can do or say will have the very slightest effect. There is no cure for love-making, unreasoning self-sacrifice, or snobbishness, says Efemera, in “The Bystander.”

The snob like the poor, is always with us. Every age is afflicted with the particular brand of snob it deserves. Snobbishness, in itself, is no great evil, though some of the forms it takes may be both repellent and ridiculous. In some classes it consists in having a parlor, an entirely useless apartment generally, furnished in red plush, set apart for the purpose of showing that the happy owners are socially equal to, if not a cut above, their neighbors. Late dinner, in certain households, is another manifestation of the same ambition, and we all know the type of lower middle-class young lady who for snobbish reasons would rather do anything than demean herself with housework—because housework is not reckoned genteel by the social luminaries of her set.

In the hallowed days of the Book of Snobs this was the distinctive mark of snobbishness, but times change, and a number of new variations have sprung up. The war and the system of voluntary recruiting brought in patriotic snobbishness which forbade any self-respecting girl to show herself in public with a man not garbed in khaki or navy-blue. A healthy manifestation, with which I, for one, have no quarrel, though in the case of men rejected by the military authorities some undeserved hardship was unavoidable. There is no reason why every nice girl should not love to be seen with a sailor, or a soldier. Who wouldn’t?

Another laudable form of the snobbish instinct is the desire to be thought to be connected with some kind of war work—that is, when it leads to some useful occupation. I hold no brief for the “war-work” which consists solely in selling flags in smart hotels and fashionable West End thoroughfares, or in getting up and taking part in entertainments from which no one in their senses, whole or wounded, military or civilian, could derive either profit or diversion, or which, on the plea of amusing our heroes home from the Front, beguiles them into expenses that many of them can ill afford.

After all, the wish to rise in the social world, or, at least, to appear to have risen, is a very natural one. Very few people whose position is not so assured as to defy criticism are entirely free from it. Through all time every class has sought to ape the customs and manner of living of the class just above it. Not a bad thing, for the whole standard has gradually been raised. This is particularly true in democratic, or, rather, plutocratic, countries, where everyone may hope to rise. Again, very few persons object to being envied, and an easy way to achieve envy is to shine in the reflected glory of smarter or wealthier friends.

That sort of snobbery is an insult to the real worker; and it is own sister to the particular brand evolved by the period in which we live—the kind of snobbishness that obtained before the war and has continued in full swing ever since. The old-fashioned snob wished to associate with his or her social superiors, or at least to appear to be in some way connected with them in some semblance of equality. The snobbish woman fawned upon ladies of title and position, and in imitation of their patronage of art and artists took to unearthing lions of her own, where-with to amaze her friends and neighbors, not to mention raising envy in their gentle breasts. Anything that could roar gently and wear some semblance to a lion’s skin was good enough. The poor Christian who had no lion to boast of was indeed to be pitied.

In the end the whole thing became a frantic race for notoriety. The snobbish woman who could not manage, upon some pretext or other, to get her name and photograph into the illustrated papers might as well be dead. However cheap the advertisement, it must be obtained at all costs. Anything has grown to be good enough, any means legitimate. As persons of established position and real lions are either scarce or not sufficiently available, Madame and Mademoiselle Snob have recourse to the merely notorious. All that is wanted is some excuse to appear in the limelight, how, when, where, and in what company does not much matter. Dignity, social or personal, counts for nothing—how should it? When Madame or Mademoiselle Snob arranges complacently to appear in some public performance with favorites, or even only notorieties, of the footlights, does she do it because the stage appears to her the most desirable career, or because of great friendship and admiration for the a fore-mentioned favorite, or simply because of the advertisement? It is true that the sacred cause of charity is generally invoked as an excuse, but charity has been known to cover a multitude of—well, let us say, indiscretions.

Getting the Men

Getting the Men

Part VI serial ‘England in Arms’

From The Canadian Magazine, October 1917.

Digitized by Doug Frizzle, August 2016.

Britain, the free! Bri­tain, the democratic monarchy! Britain, the mistress of the seas! Britain, the unconquer­able!

They were sweet-sounding tributes whose title and warranty were never honestly questioned in time of peace. And the British nation had so incor­porated them into its creed that noth­ing within the range of the most imaginative pessimist had for gen­erations cast doubt on their eternal appropriateness. Through one war Britain had struggled with but the superfluity of her energy. Through centuries of peace the world had bow­ed to Britain’s well-deserved reputa­tion.

And then came war—war of the kind that recognizes no reputations, that develops along the ordinary channels of guns and strategy and men. And Britain was forced to re­vise her creed.

In that very revision came the real struggle. Britain, the free, had to reconstruct the meaning of the word. Britain, the democratic mon­archy, had to acknowledge that de­mocracy involved co-operative reality as a prime necessity for the mainten­ance of Britain as mistress of the seas. Britain ceased to be free. That was the bitter pill.

And yet Britain passed from freedom to bondage only in the interpre­tation of those who count nothing to a nation in its extremity. Bondage laid aside its ungrateful mask and be­came union, a great patriotic rally for the dominion of freedom. “Unit­ed stand” was never so vividly demonstrated on the western side of the Atlantic. Freedom assumed its true meaning: the unassailable right to personal liberty so long as it does not infringe on the well-being of the state. Russia has tried the other kind of freedom for a few disastrous months and given the lie forever to the dreams of Socialism.

Born, bottled and bred on the free­dom of the citizen, Britain entered the war as a Crusader. That first hundred thousand passed to France but as the vanguard of the millions that were clamouring to express their loyalty by force of arms against the enemy. The millions trooped to the recruiting offices, turning their backs on their occupations, their businesses, their comfort, their families. Volun­tarism was to prove itself against every test. And for six or eight months it seemed to be succeeding. Faster than they could be trained and armed patriots rallied to the prin­ciples on trial. Great Britain was al­most satisfied—the public part of it.

But there were military, and even political, experts who were not so credulous. Lord Kitchener had an inkling of what faced the nation. The Cabinet, shamed by its own unpre­paredness, trembled. It handed over to the lion of the nation the task of affording voluntarism its greatest op­portunity. What Lord Kitchener could not accomplish in the call to arms was beyond the power of any man in Great Britain. And Lord Kitchener’s millions are a tribute to him and to his country.

But still the sweeping spectacle of Germany’s might in those early months loomed high above Great Bri­tain’s show of resistance. Kitchener appealed as only he could. Posters stared where bills never dared appear before. Huge red arrows on every London street pointed the way to the recruiting stations. The King bec­koned. Women urged and cajoled. The newspapers filled their front pages with petitions to the people. Appeals turned to warnings, then to threats. And the people thought they were hurrying. They saw the long lines before the recruiting booths, the long trains leaving for the front, the vacancies at home. But the authori­ties knew that longer lines must form, longer trains start, more homes be manless. For Germany was still near Paris, was still threatening Calais; and Mesopotamia, Egypt, Gallipoli, Greece were clamouring for fresh ag­gressive battle-fronts.

The Derby scheme was introduced.

It was in this Great Britain re­ceived its first taste of compulsion. The pill was sugar-coated at first. It was not a remedy, but a test. Every young man of military age was asked to report to the nearest recruiting station, not for service at the front, but for the compilation of a national register of fighting power. The sugar coating was very thin. The labour unions saw through it the first day. The entire country understood with­out accusing the Cabinet of falsehood in its declaration of intentions. But Great Britain was patriotic. It was also impressed with the promise that certain favours would be accorded those who attested should necessity for conscription arise. In millions the young men signed their names and ages and answered intimate ques­tions. Lord Derby became recruiting agent extraordinary.

It was because the scheme was put forward as his and superintended per­sonally by him that what obloquy at­taches to subsequent events clings un­justly to his name. Lord Derby car­ried through the idea. Mr. Asquith perverted its expressed aim. The men who walked the streets with the khaki arm-badge as an evidence of their willingness to fight upon necessity were called upon before many months to make good.

Conscription killed its reputation only by its name. Conscription meant force, and personal liberty was the Englishman’s religion. But Great Britain was strong behind the prin­ciple. Organizations sprang up in opposition, of course. There were the so-called pacifists whose hankering for publicity drowns every atom of their common-sense and reason. There were foreign outlaws seeking asylum in England, where they had fled to escape military rule and other pur­suing evils. There were Socialists whose only tangible creed is resistance to authority. And there were cow­ards. The noise they all made in chorus was deafening. Those who ac­cepted compulsion did so in silence; it was one of their virtues. Those who opposed it howled. And Asquith, impressed a little with his own breach of faith, and fully seized of the fate of his party in the event of an elec­tion, made every concession that could be made with any appearance of fair­ness and honesty. A Coalition Gov­ernment was the first necessity. It was at that time indisputable that the party which attempted to enforce conscription might be on the road to hari-kari. And both parties in the new Cabinet lent themselves with re­markable unanimity to concessions. There were elections coming some day.

Ministers of the Gospel were ex­empted from service, some attempt at control being exercised by the stipu­lation that the sect must be recog­nized. There are enough religions in England to reform the universe in this generation—or wreck it. And with exaggerated British respect for conscience conscientious objectors were, freed with the Government’s blessing.

The ministers presented only a small difficulty. But, since a man’s conscience is a more private posses­sion than his garters, there was none on this earth to decide with authority whether the conscience was for tem­porary use or was of that unfortunate stripe that becomes a habit, like drink, or cigarettes. Over the conscientious objector more strife has arisen than had he been forced to assume his share of national defence—his nation, his safeguard against coercion of conscience. His exemp­tion was a political dodge, not British fair play. That is proved by the re­fusal of the House to deprive him of the vote he will not assist in making valuable.

And to prevent the conscription of others whose claims to exemption might be as real if not as spiritual, local tribunals were set up to pass judgment.

Two conspicuously egregious follies have characterized the conduct of the Government in securing the men for the front. One is the brief for these tribunals, the other the recent efforts of the authorities to squirm around the question of trade exemptions. And of the two the refusal farce is the most complete exhibition of of­ficial folly.

The idea at the back of this con­sideration for special claims was be­yond criticism. There must be thou­sands of cases where compulsion would work unpardonable injustice and disaster. Local tribunals seemed to offer the most available court and the least expensive. But the good judgment of such bodies could not have been considered. These tri­bunals were made up of local repre­sentatives of all classes. There were titled men, country squires, mer­chants, and labourers. Theoretically there was no favouritism in the per­sonnel. However, it developed that every class of citizen had his advo­cate on the bench. And that was about all it did mean. Every claim­ant was personally known to one or all of his judges. The merchant re­sisted the conscription of his custom­ers, the manufacturer of his em­ployees, the workman of his fellow workmen, the farmer of his hands. Many of the applicants were in debt to one or more of the judges, and to send them to the trenches meant prac­tically the cancellation of the debts. The tribunals as a body were preju­diced at the start against a duty that meant interfering with the business of the community. Indeed, many of them frankly contended that their chief duty was to protect local in­dustry. The employees of members of the tribunals came before them and pleaded their cases, and while the employer usually retired for the decision, he knew he could trust his fellows as they would trust him when their turns came. Sometimes the members themselves were applicants for exemption. If it was an agricul­tural district, a farmer’s helper was certain of favourable consideration. If it was a manufacturing town manu­facturing became a national necessity. The applicant who had not a keen supporter on tribunal was rare.

Of course, the War Office attempt­ed to exercise some restraint on de­cisions. The military representative might appeal, but if he succeeded the tribunal was likely to go on strike in protest. When Sir William Robert­son was clamouring for more men there were tribunals who “downed tools” for a month at a time; and all that time the cases of hundreds of men hung fire.

Many of the exemptions were laugh­able, had they not been so serious. No occupation or profession escaped the leniency of these personal friends in the seats of the mighty. Pugilists, professional sportsmen, entertainers, labouring men whose only concern was to make enough to spend it in the pubs; clerks, workmen engaged on luxuries, men with nothing more to back their claims than a ready smile, were freely exempted. From hun­dreds of applicants for exemption only one or two would be turned down. A man would he exempted be­cause his brothers were at the front, although he and his brothers had no financial or business connection; and lengthy eulogies would be showered on him for his family’s patriotism. Weeping mothers and importunate fathers drew answering tears—and exemption for their boys. Even in July of this year a father secured exemption for six of his seven sons and one assistant, the other son refus­ing to share the family shame. There is even evidence that the members of a certain secret society were favour­ed.

Sometimes, aware of the weakness of their conduct, the tribunals re­tired into privacy to consider the claims before them.

It was a riot of favouritism, of blindness to the needs of the army, of selfishness. But the tribunals were no worse than the Government—not nearly so bad. Premier Asquith thought to lay the foundation to fu­ture political power, as well as to allay organized opposition to con­scription, by exempting the members of twenty-eight unions. To give face to the act the trades were declared as essential to the war, but others, obvi­ously more closely connected with the struggle, were ignored. And no re­strictions were laid on this exemption through certificated occupations. If a man were a member of the Amalga­mated Society of Engineers—even if he were making nothing remotely con­nected with warfare—he was exempt­ed from service. The unions thus favoured openly advertised for mem­bers on the ground that membership meant exemption. Millions of young men flocked to the munition factories and other “essential” trades, were forced to join the unions, and were immediately exempt. It did not mat­ter that their work a week ago was clerking, or following the races, or systematic loafing. An engineer was simply a member of the union and therefore immune from military ser­vice.

But the Government did not stop there. It added thousands of single young men to its departmental staffs and refused to release them for female or more aged substitutes. As with the unions, the fact that an able-­bodied young man was performing some trivial duty in a Government office was his guarantee against khaki. More, the departments reach­ed out and laid a fondling hand on hundreds of pugilists, and football players, and sportsmen, put them in khaki, and kept them in England, where they were permitted to fight (with their fists), or kick a football, for the honour of the unit with which they were connected. And each de­partment head was his own tribunal.

Of course, there were departments, like the Postal, with a finer record, but all the attempts of the House to enforce respect for their country and its danger failed of complete satis­faction.

The Government defeated its own regulation in ways more open to cri­ticism. Tribunals were ordered by department heads to exempt certain applicants without giving even a rea­son except that they were necessary to the country. They took men whose applications had been refused and placed them in easy Government posi­tions. They opened their doors to the sons of friends without any qualifica­tion save their pull.

So glaring were these inconsist­encies that even the tribunals some­times went on strike against them. While married men approaching the age limit, with large families for the country to keep, classed in the lowest medical category open to the army, and owning large businesses which would be forced to close without their heads—while these men were heartily raked into the army hundreds of thousands of young, single, A1 men were posing as indispensables at a job they had picked up. It was even the case that Government factories were engaging these young men in the place of the older, married men while the tribunals were sitting on their cases.

Some of the newspapers took the matter up, especially the Northcliffe Press. Such a cry was raised in the House that certain departments were forced to release a few of these youth­ful slackers. But every month the fight has to be revived. Most of these young men loudly declare their in­ability to follow their inclinations, but they stand up under the restric­tions with admirable fortitude and cheerfulness.

Not long after the start of the war Lloyd George’s personal wishes on the matter were demonstrated in his contentions for dilution of labour, a task for which he was set apart by his leader. It is one of his greatest accomplishments that he was able to secure the consent of the labour unions, even at the payment of ex­emption. Women were introduced, and to-day they are entering factory shops where none but man ever work­ed before. The relief it gave to a situation whose seriousness will not be told until after the war was more immediate than even its most optimis­tic supporters expected. Indeed, the effectiveness of female labour, its ver­satility, its energy and trustworthi­ness, are partially the cause of the strikes that disgraced England dur­ing early May. The English work­ingman is having it brought home to him that his future is one of real work—with real pay—for the women have, in many instances within my personal knowledge, exceeded after a couple of weeks the output of the men who have been specializing on such work for years.

Dilution freed hundreds of thou­sands of men for the fighting line. And several minor measures affected the same result directly or indirect­ly. For instance, the jury system was suspended in some cases.

But against such saving of labour and freeing of men stands the multi­plicity of officials. Work that might more honestly be done by boys and girls is in charge of uniformed of­ficers and privates. A private firm would be scandalized by the duplica­tion of work and inspection. It de­mands the services of three officials to measure the floor of a Government office to determine what to pay the scrub-woman. The streets of Lon­don are full of khaki-clad officials, ex­empt from fighting, but performing nothing that is beyond the capacity of boys or girls. And for some un­advertised reason certain men, like actors, are permitted to don khaki and continue their usual occupations.

Winston Churchill has stated in the House that there were three and a half men behind the lines for every one in the trenches. And in this Canadian military service, in London or France, is said to be little better.

When Lloyd George rode to power on a platform of aggressiveness, he organized immediately the National Service Department. It was a fine scheme, under an experienced busi­ness man and backed by a thoroughly roused public. It opened a whirl­wind campaign of publicity that car­ried the nation off its feet. It called for a half million men hitherto ex­empt from age or physical condition or otherwise, as substitutes for able­bodied workmen in essential occupa­tions. Sir William Robertson had publicly demanded a half million more men by July lst. Hundreds of thousands responded—and but one from every hundred was placed. As a department fiasco National Service stands alone. It died an unnatural death of violence at the hands of a disgusted people whose ardour has been cooled by this one act of official folly.

Then came the persistent necessity for something of real productive value. The men had to be secured. Thousands might have been combed out of the Government offices, but out in the munition factories were many times the needed number without a claim to exemption except the tech­nical one of membership in specified unions. They were not essential to the output, because it had been proved that women could do better than many of them, and men graded B3 and C3 as well, and those who had gone into the factories since the war were openly exulting in their clever­ness in thus escaping service.

There was encouragement to the Government to take them, because the union officials, finding their authority scorned by this huge new member­ship, longed for a way to free the organization of them. So the Cab­inet announced a new dilution bill whereby those under thirty-one might be taken for the army. But the new union members defeated the measure in a simple manner. Without the acknowledged backing of one union official they organized a strike under their shop stewards. It is history that the Government at first counselled, then threatened, and finally yielded, as everyone knew it would. Politics was never more in the centre of the stage than to-day, with the Liberal party split into two factions and the Unionists watching their opportunity. (And yet coalition has been the sal­vation of the country.)

Since then the policy of the au­thorities has been one of unmitigated submission to a force they fear more than seems to a Canadian to be war­ranted. And to save its official face, as well as to introduce some sense of loyalty into the young shirkers in munition factories who are watching every official move, no public mention of the cowardliness and disloyalty of these young men was breathed in the consideration of the recognized labour unrest until six weeks after the strike was over. Then a couple of indignant members arose in the House and told the truth that was already known to everyone in touch with conditions in the factories.

Defeated once more in its efforts to raise the new army where the oppor­tunities were greatest, the Govern­ment turned to other sources. The original minimum age had already been reduced, first to eighteen years and seven months, then to eighteen. Towards the middle of 1917 the other end of the age scale was tackled and men up to fifty were appealed for. To give the move some appearance of justice, it was announced that these older men would probably be requir­ed only for substitution, but in case they were needed at the Front notice would be given. But there was no exemption loophole provided. The tri­bunal folly was eliminated. Also it had been long suspected that fraudu­lent exemption on the alleged ground of physical unfitness was rife, and the men thus freed were ordered for re-examination. In one district it was discovered that one in every four ex­emptions was dishonest. Legal action was taken against dishonest medical examiners. As was suspected, the numbers of seemingly strong men wearing the badge of discharged sol­diers were large enough to merit in­vestigation. These, too, were ordered up for re-examination.

It was obvious that the Government was attempting to solve the problem by following the smoothest channel. The older men with expensive fam­ilies for the country, the discharged and unfit—everyone who was not organized for opposition—was on the way to service, while millions of the very youths for military life were flaunting their immunity. Where­upon the discharged soldiers organ­ized. First of all there was a spon­taneous and natural protest against forcing re-examination on the obvi­ously unfit, on the nervous wrecks.

And there the Government bowed to popular opinion. And when the case of the discharged soldiers was re-con­sidered a compromise was made ex­empting those who had already served overseas, even though they had once again been passed by the doctors. But still the young men in the muni­tion factories calmly issued their de­mands on threat of strike or decreas­ed production.

Other unions proved their loyalty. There were demands from some of them to clean out their own young men. The South Wales miners, whose record of loyalty follows a fluctuating line, spoke through one of their representatives in the House. They held indignation meetings, at which they called upon the Govern­ment to take the 205,000 unmarried miners under the age of thirty-one.

At the same time London was swarming with aliens, subjects of al­lied countries or of none, who were replacing Englishmen in their jobs. It was estimated that in England were 200,000 friendly foreigners of military age. When the spectacle be­came unbearable and the public anger dangerous, legislation was introduced to force them into the armies of this or their own countries. Of course, the so-called Pacifists and those others whose only meeting-ground is their pro-Germanism, fought in the House of Commons to exempt these people; but the feeling of the House was overwhelmingly against them.

It was at this time was held the notorious Leeds Convention, in early June, an aggregation of Labour and Socialist anti-war, peace-at-any-price advocates who posed as representa­tives of British labour. It has been estimated that thirty-three per cent. of the delegates were Russian Jews, thirty per cent. conscientious objec­tors, and twelve per cent. acknow­ledged pacifists. As their object was solely to end the war to save their own skins or Germany’s they received scant respect from the country. The experiences of Ramsay Macdonald and his friend Jowett will have done more than all the thousands of lec­tures and mobbings they have receiv­ed to show them that there is a limit to human patience.

That is where the man-power pro­blem rests to-day. What will be the solution is not at the moment appar­ent. Some say that the Government prefers to struggle along with what it has until the millions of the United States are available. At any rate, it seems certain that the present Gov­ernment will not coerce the shirkers who have defeated it so easily at every move. It would be hard to blame Great Britain for leaving some of the fighting to the newest ally, and no one would be less likely to protest than the United States, which enter­ed the war after the worst of the strain was over and can never, in any event, suffer as have those who took up the cudgels earlier.

That there should be a problem in a democratic country of finding the men for a war like this is not surpris­ing. It is no contemptuous comment on the loyalty of the British. No other country would have gone so far on voluntarism, no country have given such proof of its patriotism without coercion. But there comes a limit to voluntarism in a war where every man and woman has work to do; and the shirkers stand out more promin­ently than their numbers warrant. Where Great Britain failed was in the loopholes she provided to the shirkers. Without preparation she found the men to block the armies of a country trained and fitted to the last movement and gun. It was only in the last pound of her strength that her manhood failed her. She secured the men for the worst days of the war. And even without the entry of later allies she would have found the men for victory when her back was against the wall.

Freedom is a misnomer in a na­tion’s crisis.

The next article of this series is entitled “The Food Problem”.