WOMAN AND WAR AND WAR ^ FROM "WOMAN AND LABOR" BY OLIVE SCHREINER n NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT, IQII, BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY All rights reserved November, 1914 FOREWORD No excuse is needed for reprinting at this time from Olive Schreiner's classic, "WOMAN AND LABOR," her treatment of "Woman and War." There is no other exposition of wom- en's natural hatred of war so searching, so true and so moving as this. Her in- spired words on the subject, beyond their importance as a deeply significant statement of the attitude of women toward bloodshed and killing, to be read and taken to heart in its bearing on the greatest war in history, are vital as a prophecy of how war in the future will pass away. It is a curious fact that the whole FOREWORD fate of the book, "WOMAN AND LABOR," is connected with war. In the introduction the author tells of the irreparable destruction of the nearly completed manuscript of which the book as published is but a reminiscent fragment. She had finally finished, she tells us, the work on women which had occupied a large part of her life since her early youth. There only remained revision and the writing of a preface before publication. She continues the story thus: "In 1899 I was living in Johannes- burg, when, owing to ill-health, I was ordered suddenly to spend some time at a lower level. At the end of two months the Boer War broke out. Two days after war was proclaimed I ar- rived at De Aar on my way back to the Transvaal ; but martial law had already [6] FOREWORD been proclaimed there, and the military authorities refused to allow me to re- turn to my home in the Transvaal and sent me down to the Colony; nor was I allowed to send any communication through, to any person who might have extended some care over my possessions. Some eight months after, when the Bri- tish troops had taken and entered Jo- hannesburg, a friend, who, being on the British side, had been allowed to go up, wrote me that he had visited my house and found it looted and that all that was of value had been taken or destroyed; my desk had been forced open and broken up, and its contents set on fire in the center of the room, so that the roof was blackened over the pile of burnt papers. He added that there was little in the remnants of paper of which I could make any use, but that he had [7] FOREWORD gathered and stored the fragments till such time as I might be allowed to come and see them. I thus knew my book had been destroyed. "Some months later in the war when confined in a little up-country hamlet many hundreds of miles from the coast and from Johannesburg; with the brunt of the war at that time breaking round us, de Wet was said to have crossed the Orange River and to have been within a few miles of us, and the British col- umns moved hither and thither. I was living in a little house on the outskirts of the village, in a single room, with a stretcher and two packing-cases as fur- niture, and with only my little dog for company. Thirty-six armed African natives were set to guard night and day at the doors and windows of the house; [8] FOREWORD and I was only allowed to go out during certain hours in the middle of the day to fetch water from the fountain in the middle of the village, or to buy what I needed. I was allowed to receive no newspapers or magazines. "A high barbed wire fence, guarded by armed natives, surrounded the vil- lage, through which it would have been death to try to escape. All day the pom-poms from the armored trains that paraded on the railway line nine miles distant could be heard at intervals; and at night there was the talk of the armed natives as they pressed against the win- dows, and the tramp of the watch with the endless "Who goes there?" as they walked round the wire fence through the long, dark hours when I was nei- ther allowed to light a candle nor strike [9] FOREWORD a match. When a conflict was fought near by, the dying and wounded were brought in ; three men belonging to our little village were led out to execution; death sentences were read in our little market-place; our prison was filled with our fellow-countrymen; and we did not know from hour to hour what the next would bring to us. "Under these conditions I felt it nec- essary I should resolutely force my thought at times from the horror of the world around me, to dwell on some ab- stract question, and it was under these circumstances that this little book was written, being a remembrance mainly drawn from one chapter of the larger book. The armed native guards stand- ing against the windows, it was impos- sible to open the shutters, and the room [10] FOREWORD was therefore so dark that even the physical act of writing was difficult. "A year and a half after, when the war was over and peace had been pro- claimed for about four months, I with difficulty obtained a permit to visit the Transvaal. I found among the burnt fragments the leathern back of my book intact, but the front half of the leaves had been completely burnt away; the back half of the leaves next to the cover were still all there, but so browned and scorched with the flames that they broke as you touched them; and there was nothing left but to destroy it. I even then had a hope that at some future time I might yet rewrite the whole book. But life is short; and I have found that not only shall I never re- write the book, but I shall not have the FOREWORD health even to fill out and harmonize this little remembrance from it. "It is with some pain that I give out this fragment. I am only comforted by the thought that perhaps all sincere and earnest search after truth, even where it fails to reach it, yet often comes so near to it that other minds more happily situated may be led, by pointing out its very limitations, to ob- tain a larger view." [12] WOMAN AND WAR I IT may be said, "Granting fully that you are right, that, as woman's old fields of labor slip from her, she must grasp new, or must become wholly de- pendent on her sexual function alone, all the other elements of human nature in her becoming atrophied and arrested through lack of exercise, and granting that her evolution being arrested, the evolution of the whole race will be also arrested in her person; granting all this to the full, and allowing that the bulk of human labor tends to become more and more intellectual and less and less purely mechanical as perfected ma- WOMAN AND WAR chinery takes the place of crude human exertion; and that therefore if woman is to be saved from degeneration and parasitism, and the body of humanity from arrest, she must receive a training which will cultivate all the intellectual and all the physical faculties and be allowed freely to employ them; never- theless, would it not be possible, and be well, that a dividing line of some kind should be drawn between the occupa- tions of men and of women? Would it not be possible that woman should re- tain agriculture, textile manufactory, trade, domestic management, the edu- cation of youth, and medicine, in addi- tion to child-bearing, as her exclusive fields of toil ; while to the male should be left the study of abstract science, law and war, and statecraft; as of old, WOMAN AND WAR man took war and the chase, and wom- an absorbed the further labors of life? Why should there not be again a fair and even division in the field of social labor?" Superficially, this suggestion appears rational, having at least this to recom- mend it, that it appears to harmonize with the course of human evolution in the past; but closely examined, it will, we think, be found to have no practical or scientific basis, and to be out of har- mony with the conditions of modern life. In ancient and primitive societies, the mere larger size and muscular strength of man in certain mechanical directions, and woman's incessant phys- ical activity in child-bearing and suck- ling, made almost inevitable such a sex- ual division of labor in almost all coun- WOMAN AND WAR tries, save perhaps in ancient Egypt. 1 Woman naturally took the heavy agri- cultural and domestic labors, which were yet more consistent with the con- tinual dependence of infant life on her own, than those of man in war and the chase. There was nothing artificial in such a division; it threw the heaviest burden of the most wearying and unex- citing forms of social labor on woman, but under it both sexes labored, and each transmitted to the other, through inheritance, the fruit of its slowly ex- panding and always exerted powers; and the race progressed. Individual women might sometimes, 1 The division of labor between the sexes in ancient Egypt and other exceptional countries is a matter of much interest, which cannot here be entered on. [16] WOMAN AND WAR and even often, become the warriors or chiefs of tribes; the King of Ashantee might train his terrible regiment of fe- males; and men might now and again plant and weave for their children : but in the main, and in most societies, the division of labor was just,natural, bene- ficial, and it was inevitable that such a division should take place. Were to- day a band of civilized men, women, and infants thrown down absolutely naked and defenseless in some desert, and cut off hopelessly from all external civilized life, undoubtedly very much the old division of labor would, at least for a time, reassert itself. Men would look about for stones and sticks with which to make weapons, with which to repel wild beasts and enemies, and would go a-hunting meat and tend the WOMAN AND WAR beasts when tamed; 1 women would suckle their children, cook the meat men brought, build shelters, look for roots and if possible cultivate them. There certainly would be no parasite in the society. The woman who refused to labor for her offspring, and the man who refused to hunt or defend society would not be supported by their fel- lows, would soon be extinguished by want. As wild beasts were extin- guished and others tamed and the ma- terials for war improved, fewer men would be needed for hunting and war; then they would remain at home and aid in building and planting; many women would retire into the house to perfect domestic toil and handicrafts, and on a small scale the common an- 1 The young captured animals would probably be tamed and reared by the women. [18] WOMAN AND WAR cient evolution of society would prac- tically repeat itself. But for the pres- ent we see no such natural and sponta- neous division of labor based on natural sexual distinctions in the new fields of intellectual or delicately skilled man- ual labor, which are taking the place of the old. II It is possible, though at present there is nothing to give indication of such a fact, and it seems highly improbable, that, in some subtle manner now incom- prehensible, there might tend to be a subtle correlation between that condi- tion of the brain and nervous system which accompanies ability in the direc- tion of certain forms of mental, social labor and the particular form of repro- ductive function possessed by an indi- vidual. It may be that, inexplicable as it seems, there may ultimately be found to be some connection between that condition of the brain and nervous system which fits the individual for the study of the higher mathematics, let us [20] WOMAN AND WAR say, and the nature of their sex attri- butes. The mere fact that, of the hand- ful of women who, up to the present, have received training and been al- lowed to devote themselves to abstract study, several have excelled in the higher mathematics, proves of neces- sity no preeminent tendency on the part of the female sex in the direction of mathematics, as compared to labor in the fields of statesmanship, administra- tion, or law, as into these fields there has been practically no admittance for women. It is sometimes stated, that as several women of genius in modern times have sought to find expression for their creative powers in the art of fic- tion, there must be some inherent con- nection in the human brain between the ovarian sex function and the art of fic- tion. The fact is that modern fiction, [21] WOMAN AND WAR being merely a description of human life in any of its phases, and being the only art that can be exercised without special training or special appliances, and produced in the moments stolen from the multifarious, brain-destroying occupations which fill the average woman's life, they have been driven to find this outlet for their powers as the only one presenting itself. How far otherwise might have been the direc- tions in which their genius would nat- urally have expressed itself can be known only to the women themselves; what the world has lost by that compul- sory expression of genius, in a form which may not have been its most nat- ural form of expression, or only one of its forms, no one can ever know. Even in the little third-rate novelist whose works cumber the ground, we see [22] WOMAN AND WAR often a pathetic figure when we recog- nize that beneath that failure in a com- plex and difficult art, may lie buried a sound legislator, an able architect, an original scientific investigator, or a good judge. Scientifically speaking, it is as unproven that there is any organic relation between the brain of the fe- male and the production of art in the form of fiction, as that there is an or- ganic relation between the hand of woman and the typewriter. Both the creative writer and the typist, in their respective spheres, are merely finding outlets for their powers in the direc- tion of least mental resistance. The ten- dency of women at the present day to undertake certain forms of labor proves only that in the crabbed, walled-in, and bound conditions surrounding woman at the present day, these are the lines [23] WOMAN AND WAR along which action is most possible to her. It may possibly be that, in future ages, when the male and female forms have been placed in like intellectual conditions, with like stimuli, like train- ings and like rewards, some aptitudes may be found running parallel with the line of sex function when humanity is viewed as a whole. It may possibly be that, when the historian of the future looks back over the history of the intel- lectually freed and active sexes for many generations, a decided preference of the female intellect for mathemat- ics, engineering, or statecraft may be made clear; and that a like marked in- clination in the male to excel in acting, music, or astronomy may by careful and large comparison be shown. But for the present, we have no adequate scien- WOMAN AND WAR tific data from which to draw any con- clusion, and any attempt to divide the occupations in which male and female intellects and wills should be employed, must be to attempt a purely artificial and arbitrary division: a division not more rational and scientific than an at- tempt to determine by the color of his eyes and the shape and strength of his legs, whether a lad should be an as- tronomer or an engraver. Ill Those physical differences among mankind which divide races and na- tions not merely those differences, enormously greater as they are gener- ally, than any physical differences be- tween male and female of the same race, which divide the Jew and the Swede, the Japanese and the Englishman, but even those subtle physical differences which divide closely allied races such as the English and German often ap- pear to be allied with subtle differences in intellectual aptitudes. Yet even with regard to these differences, it is almost impossible to determine scientifically in how far they are the result of na- tional traditions, environment, and ed- [26] WOMAN AND WAR ucation, and in how far they run paral- lel with the differences in physical con- formation. 1 1 In thinking of physical sex differences, the civilized man of modern times has always to guard himself against being unconsciously misled by the very exaggerated external sex differences which our unnatural method of sex clothing and dressing the hair produces. The unclothed and natural human male and female bodies are not more divided from each other than those of the lion and lioness. Our remote Saxon ancestors, with their great white bodies and flowing hair worn long by both sexes, were but little distin- guished from each other ; while among their mod- ern descendants the short-haired, darkly clothed, manifestly two-legged male differs absolutely from the usually long-haired, color bedizened, much skirted female. Were the structural differ- ences between male and female really one-half as marked as the artificial visual differences, they would be greater than those dividing, not merely any species of man from each other, but as great as those which divide orders in the animal world. Only a mind exceedingly alert and analytical can fail ultimately to be misled by habitual visual mis- [27] WOMAN AND WAR No study of the mere physical differ- ences between individuals of different races would have enabled us to arrive at any knowledge of their mental apti- tude; nor does the fact that certain in- dividuals of a given human variety have certain aptitudes form a rational ground for compelling all individuals of that variety to undertake a certain form of labor. No analysis, however subtle, of the physical conformation of the Jew could have suggested a priori, and still less could have proved, apart from ages of practical experience, that, running par- representation. There is not, probably, one man or woman in twenty thousand who is not power- fully influenced in modern life in their concep- tion of the differences, physical and intellectual, dividing the human male and female, by the gro- tesque exaggerations of modern attire and artifi- cial manners. [28] WOMAN AND WAR allel with any physical characteristics which may distinguish him from his fellows, was an innate and unique in- tellectual gift in the direction of re- ligion. The fact that, during three thousand years, from Moses to Isaiah, through Jesus and Paul, on to Spinoza, the Jewish race has produced men who have given half the world its religious faith and impetus, proves that, some- where and somehow, whether con- nected organically with that physical organization that marks the Jew, or as the result of his traditions and train- ing, there does go this gift in the mat- ter of religion. But, on the other hand, we find millions of Jews who are to- tally and markedly deficient in it, and to base any practical legislation for the individual even on this proven intel- lectual aptitude of the race as a whole [29] WOMAN AND WAR would be manifestly as ridiculous as abortive. Yet more markedly, with the Ger- man no consideration of his physical peculiarities, though it proceeded to the subtlest analysis of nerve, bone, and muscle, could in the present stage of our knowledge have proved to us what generations of experience appear to have proved, that, with that organiza- tion which constitutes the German, goes a unique aptitude for music. There is always the possibility of mistaking the result of training and external circum- stance for inherent tendency, but when we consider the passion for music which the German has shown, and when we consider that the greatest mu- sicians the world has seen, from Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart to Wagner, have been of that race, it appears highly [30] WOMAN AND WAR probable that such a correlation be- tween the German organization and the intellectual gift of music does ex- ist. Similar intellectual peculiarities seem to be connoted by the external dif- ferences which mark off other races from each other. Nevertheless, if per- sons of all of these nationalities gath- ered in one colony, any attempt to leg- islate for their restriction to certain forms of intellectual labor on the ground of their apparently proved na- tional aptitudes or disabilities, would be regarded as insane. To insist that all Jews, and none but Jews, should lead and instruct in religious matters; that all Englishmen, and none but Eng- lishmen, should engage in trade; that each German should make his living by music, and none but a German allowed WOMAN AND WAR to practice it, would drive to despair the unfortunate individual English- man, whose most marked deficiency might be in the direction of finance and bartering trade power; the Jew, whose religious instincts might be entirely rudimentary; or the German, who could not distinguish one note from an- other ; and the society as a whole would be an irremediable loser, in one of the heaviest of all forms of social loss the loss of the full use of the highest capaci- ties of all its members. [32] IV It may be that with sexes as with races, the subtlest physical differences between them may have their mental correlatives; but no abstract considera- tion of the human body in relation to its functions of sex can, in the present state of our knowledge, show us what intellectual capacities tend to vary with sexual structure, and nothing in the present or past condition of male or female gives us more than the very faintest possible indication of the rela- tion of their intellectual aptitudes and their sexual functions. And even if it were proved by centuries of experi- ment that with the possession of the uterine function of sex tends to go ex- [33] WOMAN AND WAR ceptional intellectual capacity in the direction of mathematics rather than natural history, or an inclination for statecraft rather than for mechanical invention; were it proved that, gener- ally speaking and as a whole, out of twenty thousand women devoting themselves to law and twenty thousand to medicine, they tended to achieve rel- atively more in the field of law than of medicine, there would yet be no possi- ble healthy or rational ground for re- stricting the activities of the individual female to that line in which the average female appeared rather more fre- quently to excel. 1 1 Minds not keenly analytical are always apt to mistake mere correlation of appearance with causative sequence. We have heard it gravely asserted that between potatoes, pigs, mud cabins, and Irishmen there was an organic connection; but we who have lived in Colonies know that [34] WOMAN AND WAR That even one individual in a so- ciety should be debarred from under- taking that form of social toil for which it is most fitted, makes an unnecessary deficit in the general social assets. That one male Froebel should be prohibited or hampered in his labor as an educator of infancy, on the ground that infantile instruction was the field of the female; that one female with gifts in the direc- tion of state administration, should be compelled to instruct an infants' school, perhaps without any gift for so doing, is a running to waste of social life- blood. Free trade in labor and equality of within two generations the pure-bred descen- dant of the mud cabin becomes often the suc- cessful politician, wealthy financier, or great judge; and shows no more predilection for po- tatoes, pigs, and mud cabins than men of any other race. [35] WOMAN AND WAR training, intellectual or physical, is es- sential if the organic aptitudes of a sex or class are to be determined. And our demand to-day is that natural condi- tions, inexorably, but beneficently, may determine the labors of each individual, and not artificial restrictions. [36] As there is no need to legislate that Hindus, being generally supposed to have a natural incapacity for field sports, shall not betake themselves to them for, if they have no capacity, they will fail; and, as in spite of the Hindus' supposed general incapacity for sport, it is possible for an individual Hindu to become the noted batsman of his age; so, there is no need to legislate that woman should be restricted in her choice of fields of labor; for the or- ganic incapacity of the individual, if it exist, will legislate far more strongly than any artificial, legal, or social ob- struction can do ; and it may be that the one individual in ten thousand who se- [37] WOMAN AND WAR lects a field not generally sought by his fellows will enrich humanity by the result of an especial genius. Allow- ing all to start from the one point in the world of intellectual culture and labor, with our ancient Mother Nature sitting as umpire, distributing the prizes and scratching from the lists the incompetent, is all we demand, but we demand it determinedly. Throw the puppy into the water : if it swims, well ; if it sinks, well ; but do not tie a rope round its throat and weight it with a brick, and then assert its incapacity to keep afloat. For the present,