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╇i

Gender and the Great War


╇iii

ij

Gender and the Great War

Edited by
Susan R. Grayzel and Tammy M. Proctor

ij

1
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data


Grayzel, Susan R., editor of compilation. | Proctor, Tammy M., 1968– editor of compilation.
Title: Gender and the Great War / edited by Susan R. Grayzel and Tammy M. Proctor.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, [2017] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017002554 (print) | LCCN 2017017799 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190271091 (Updf ) | ISBN 9780190271107 (Epub) | ISBN 9780190271077 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780190271084 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1914–1918—Women. | World War, 1914–1918—Participation, Female. |
World War, 1914–1918—Social aspects. | Sex role—History—20th century.
Classification: LCC D639.W7 (ebook) | LCC D639.W7 G395 2017 (print) | DDC 940.3082—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017002554

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Paperback printed by WebCom, Inc., Canada


Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
v

In memory of Gail Braybon, pioneering scholar of gender and the Great War
╇vi

i

Contents

Acknowledgmentsâ•… ix
Contributorsâ•… xi

Introductionâ•… 1
Susan R. Grayzel and Tammy M. Proctor

1. Gender and Citizenshipâ•… 10


Kimberly Jensen

2. Gender and Resistanceâ•… 27


Erika Kuhlman

3. Gender and Workâ•… 46


Deborah Thom

4. Gender and Raceâ•… 67


Richard S. Fogarty

5. Gender and Sexualityâ•… 91


Ana Carden-╉Coyne and Laura Doan

6. Gender and Ageâ•… 115


Tammy M. Proctor

7. Gender and Occupationâ•… 133


Jovana Knežević

vii
viii i Contents

8. Gender and Everyday Life 149


Karen Hunt

9. Gender and Warfare 169


Susan R. Grayzel

10. Gender and Violence 187


Michelle Moyd

11. Gender and Mourning 211


Joy Damousi

12. Gender and Memory 230


Karen Petrone

13. The Scholarship of the First World War 248


Susan R. Grayzel and Tammy M. Proctor

Selected Bibliography 259


Index 283
ix

Acknowledgments

i
The editors would like to thank the organizers of the 2014 Sixteenth Berkshire
Conference on the History of Women, Gender and Sexualities for allowing us to
present the earliest versions of these essays at two linked roundtables. Special thanks
to audiences at that conference who tolerated very crowded rooms in order to par-
ticipate in the ensuing conversation. We are extremely grateful to the contributors—​
our friends and colleagues—​for participating in the roundtables and for the pleasure
of working with them as we prepared this volume.
As co-​editors, we also appreciate enormously the opportunity to have worked
together from vision to roundtable to volume and look forward to future
collaborations.
Special thanks go to Nancy Toff, whose enthusiasm for and attention to our work
have been extraordinarily generous. Thanks to her, Elda Granata, and the other staff
at Oxford University Press for helping us bring this book to life. We would like to
express our gratitude to Abigail Fritz and Jessica Nelson, students at Utah State
University, who assisted with the bibliographic and indexing work.
Each of us has benefited from the rich intellectual life of our institutional homes,
the University of Mississippi, Wittenberg University, and Utah State University.
We are grateful for the years of student questions, which have enriched our perspec-
tives on questions of gender and war. The assistance and encouragement of students,
faculty, and staff at our universities have been invaluable.
Finally, as always, we thank Joe and Todd for all of their support.
ix
xi

Contributors

i
Ana Carden-​Coyne, Senior Lecturer in war and conflict and co-​Director of the
Centre for the Cultural History of War, University of Manchester. Author of
Reconstructing the Body: Classicism, Modernism and the First World War (2009).
Joy Damousi, Professor of history, University of Melbourne. Author of The Labour
of Loss: Mourning, Memory, and Wartime Bereavement in Australia (1999).
Laura Doan, Professor of cultural history and Sexuality Studies and co-​Director,
Centre for the Study of Sexuality and Culture, University of Manchester. Author
of Disturbing Practices: History, Sexuality, and Women’s Experience of Modern War
(2013).
Richard S. Fogarty, Associate Professor of History and Associate Dean, University
at Albany, State University of New York. Author of Race and War in France: Colonial
Subjects in the French Army, 1914–​1918 (2008).
Susan R. Grayzel, Professor of History at the University of Mississippi. Author of
At Home and Under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain from the Great War to the
Blitz (Cambridge, 2012) and Women’s Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and
Politics in Britain and France during the First World War (1999).

xi
xii i Contributors

Karen Hunt, Professor of modern British history, Keele University. Author of


Equivocal Feminists (2002) and “The Politics of Food and Women’s Neighborhood
Activism in First World War Britain” International Labor and Working-​Class History
77, no. 1 (2010): 8–​26.
Kimberly Jensen, Professor of history and gender studies, Western Oregon State
University. Author of Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War
(2008).
Jovana Knežević, Associate Director, Center for Russian, East European and
Eurasian Studies, Stanford University. Author of “Prostitutes as a Threat to National
Honor in Habsburg-​Occupied Serbia during the Great War,” Journal of the History
of Sexuality 20, no. 1 (2011): 312–​335.
Erika Kuhlman, Professor of history and Director of the Women’s Studies Program,
Idaho State University. Author of Of Little Comfort: War Widows, Fallen Soldiers,
and the Remaking of the Nation after the Great War (2012) and Reconstructing
Patriarchy after the Great War: Women, Gender, and Postwar Reconciliation between
Nations (2008).
Michelle Moyd, Associate Professor of history, Indiana University. Author of
Violent Intermediaries: African Soldiers, Conquest, and Everyday Colonialism in
German East Africa (2014).
Karen Petrone, Professor and Chair of the Department of History, University of
Kentucky. Author of The Great War in Russian Memory (2011).
Tammy M. Proctor, Professor and Department Head in the Department of History,
Utah State University. Author of Civilians in a World at War, 1914–​1918 (2010) and
Female Intelligence: Women and Espionage in the First World War (2003).
Deborah Thom, Fellow and Director of studies in history, Robinson College,
Cambridge University. Author of Nice Girls and Rude Girls: Women Workers and
the First World War (1998).
1

Introduction
Susan R. Grayzel and Tammy M. Proctor

i
What do we think we know about the First World War? To talk about the First
World War means addressing a story that developed out of the troubled decades
following the conflict, a tale that has had incredible staying power over the past cen-
tury. The dominant account of the first modern total war is one of blunders and of a
lost world of innocence; it contains a beautifully simple buildup to 1914 and reveals
the lie of the “war to end all wars.” The players in this version of the war are young
male soldiers sent to their doom by old men, beautiful yet tragic female nurses tend-
ing the wounded, and fiery revolutionaries fomenting the violence that permeated
the postwar world. This version holds some truth, but it obscures a central reality
of the experience of the conflict: that this modern, total, global war was a messy
and unpredictable affair. Its central players included men and women of all ages and
classes, both combatants and noncombatants. Across the globe, societies rose and
fell as a result of these four years.
We are the inheritors of the postwar world of failed imperial ambitions and politi-
cal violence, as well as the revised international order that solidly placed the United
States on top. We need to understand this war, and this book aims to help. The
essays that follow consider the ugly, uncomfortable parts of the war in order to tell
a more complex story of the 1914–​1918 conflict through the lens of gender. World
War I touched the lives of millions of men and women around the world, from the
deserts of southern Africa to the Siberian tundra, but in quite varied ways. A man

1
2i Gender and the Great War

living in occupied Poland experienced the conflict in a much different way than a
man of the same age serving as a soldier in Mesopotamia. Female refugees in north-
ern France saw a different side of war than did women who nursed soldiers in war-╉
ravaged Galicia. A child in Vienna received a meager food ration while a child in the
United States could still enjoy abundance. The scope of the war and the complexity
of its impact on world history make the Great War a challenging but essential con-
flict to study.

1914: A World Lost?

When some teachers of history talk about Europe during the summer months of
1914, they tend to paint a picture of a halcyon surface with the dark tensions of
nationalism, imperialism, and militarism swirling underneath. Looking back at the
years from the end of the nineteenth century to the start of the twentieth century,
writers coined the phrase the “belle époque” (beautiful era). Nostalgia led them to
see a prosperous, ordered society set adrift by an assassin in Sarajevo, who in kill-
ing Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-╉Hungarian Empire, set in
motion the devastation of the Great War. The “Guns of August” appear in this story
as an inevitable end to the peaceful world of prewar Europe, and the month between
Gavrilo Princip’s bullets in Sarajevo and the first artillery bombardment of Belgrade
to start the war fits nicely into the tale.
Yet there was nothing inevitable about the beginning of war, and Europe was
far from a peaceful place. Revolutionary movements in most European countries
sparked riots, political reform, and even all-╉out revolution in the years leading up
to 1914, and European empires fought bloody conflicts in their extended colonies
throughout much of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The major
powers—╉Austria-╉Hungary, Britain, France, Germany, and Russia—╉had also wit-
nessed war on the European continent since the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815.
But much had changed by 1914.
Politically, new ideas that emphasized national belonging and new currents that
allowed for greater, if uneven, democratization had transformed European societies.
More men voted and held political office than ever before; robust labor movements
gave voice to industrial workers seeking better lives. The emergence of new voices
and opportunities inspired others living on the margins of political and economic
power. Ethnic and religious minorities organized associations to challenge their
perceived and real oppression. Educational opportunities created more educated
citizenries that could read, write, and speak their dissent, leading to a widespread
feeling at the turn of the century that the world was transforming the certainties of
3

Introduction j3
the past. Even women increasingly demanded equal political and legal rights in this
new world.
Nationalists and imperialists provided one response to the instability that democ-
racy brought by taking aim at the threat to political control by elites. They offered
national glory and the promise of imperial might to counter transnational class-​based
ideas like socialism or Marxism. Cecil Rhodes, creator of the Rhodes Scholarships
and consummate empire builder in southern Africa, captured this idea in his oft-​
quoted statement: “If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists.”1
The fear of social revolution and civil war was real, and it was fueled even more
by a wave of assassinations and violent actions by anarchists in the early decades of
the twentieth century. Assassins killed American presidents, British diplomats, and
Russian tsars, demonstrating the vulnerability of those in power.
In the meantime, smaller-​scale wars, internal conflicts, revolutions, and the bru-
tal violence of imperial conquest had helped encourage new tactics and test new
weaponry. Yet they had not shown the bulk of Europeans what modern war could
bring. By 1914, a series of wars in imperial territories and in the Balkan Peninsula in
particular exposed the insecurity of existing power structures. Neither Russia nor
the Ottoman Empire nor Austria-​Hungary was prepared to concede its influence in
this area. Mounting international tensions had also created an alliance system that
could turn local struggles into international ones. The emergence of the powerful
new nation of Germany in 1871 prompted that government to seek to contain its
enemies, and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-​Hungary, and Italy offered a
bulwark against threats from the French and Russians, and then from the expanded
Triple Entente that added the British to this side. Germany’s industrial might, sec-
ond only to that of the United States by 1914, and its newly built Imperial Navy only
increased international anxieties.
As a result, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie by
Bosnian Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914, soured the already tense
relationship between Serbia and Austria-​Hungary. Many historians have sought to
make sense of the “July Crisis,” the series of steps and missteps that led Germany to
condone the actions of Austria-​Hungary and Russia to stand behind Serbia, with
France lending support. Piece by piece, the groundwork of national competition
and the buildup of arms turned what could have been a Third Balkan War instead
into a conflict that consumed much of the world. From July 28 to August 5, par-
ticipating states mobilized the largest armies that had ever been seen. Some voices
predicted a long, bloody conflict, others promised victory by Christmas, and an
anguished minority cried out in opposition. States and colonies around the world
declared their allegiances or their neutrality, taking a stance in this increasingly dan-
gerous conflict. Japan and Britain fired on the German colony in China; German
4i Gender and the Great War

and African forces clashed with British and African forces in East Africa; troop
ships left the harbors of Senegal, Australia, Canada, and South Africa.
Quickly, in the fall of 1914, a war of movement turned into a quagmire in the
West (Belgium and France); on the Eastern Front, armies invaded and occupied
large parts of Eastern Europe. In a war between continental empires, colonies under
European control became spaces of conflict and places to supply resources and labor
(military and otherwise), voluntarily and under coercion. As the war continued into
1915, new combatants entered the conflict such as the Ottoman Empire on the side
of the Central Powers and Italy on the side of the Entente. Neutral states such as the
United States and Sweden found themselves acting as diplomatic arbiters between
the warring states. New weapons—​lethal poison gas, Zeppelins and airplanes, sub-
marines, large-​scale artillery—​entered the war with devastating consequences. These
advances further extended the zones affected by conflict as well as expanded the
range of people who could now lay down their lives for a nation at war. A stalemate
sank into the Western Front, and the trench became a lasting symbol of the war.
By 1916, the seemingly intractable nature of the war led to calculated risks, and
the bloodbaths of Verdun and the Somme on the Western Front and the Brusilov
offensive in the East. In the meantime, the Allied naval blockade cut short the food
supply in continental Europe, helping to make hunger a weapon of this modern,
industrialized war. The year 1917 witnessed mutinies, strikes, and ultimately a revolu-
tion in Russia that brought down the reign of the tsars. In the aftermath of the fall of
the Romanovs, the world’s first communist regime took power and Russia plunged
into the carnage of civil war. Having tacitly lent aid to Britain, the United States
abandoned its neutrality in the middle of 1917 and helped sway the balance in the
remaining eighteen months of the conflict. When the fighting stopped in Europe on
November 11, 1918, nearly 75 million military and civilian lives had been lost or dam-
aged, and millions of other lives had been reshaped by the global war. Four imperial
dynasties disappeared: the Ottomans (Turkey), the Habsburgs (Austria-​Hungary),
the Hohenzollerns (Germany), and the Romanovs (Russia). In the wake of these
historic political upheavals, new nations arose to vie for legitimacy. Physical destruc-
tion near the battle zones was catastrophic, and material deprivation threatened
whole populations in the immediate postwar period.
This is the standard narrative of this war, cut to its bare bones. It conjures images
of landscapes destroyed by the modern methods of fighting and the devastation that
reigned in its wake. Yet this account very much obscures the diversity of the wartime
experiences of those caught up in the First World War. By using gender as a frame-
work for looking at men’s and women’s lives in the war, this book presents a different
picture, one that not only alters our understanding of the years 1914–​1918 but also
helps us to see why the problems of the postwar world were so thorny.
╇5

Introduction j5
Men, Masculinity, and the War

“Gender” is a term that often becomes code for “women,” but it is a powerful tool for
understanding men’s lives as well, especially in wartime. Prior to World War I, most
European nations passed legislation mandating military service for all men, and this
practice marked a new milestone in preparing nations for modern war. Each nation’s
legislation differed in terms of length of service, options for deferral, and exceptions,
but these laws meant that a whole generation of young men now learned the basics
of soldiering at an early age (typically eighteen). Even in Britain, which had no man-
datory draft, schools, universities, and organizations encouraged voluntary training
in order to create a defense force in reserve. The result of these mandatory military
exercises was a new expectation for all men; war service became proof of manliness.
Boys’ magazines and books emphasized the qualities of honor and heroism for teen
boys to prepare them for the service they would someday need to perform. Heroes
of far-╉off imperial wars made especially good role models for boys, emphasizing both
the manly qualities of the soldier and the racial superiority of Europeans.
What this meant for young men in 1914 is that they had been prepped—╉by train-
ing experiences, the media, and public enthusiasm for uniforms—╉to see their war
service not only as a duty but even more as an exciting adventure. This is not to say
that there were not men who opposed the war and who attempted to stay out of
uniform—╉chiefly religious pacifists and leftists—╉but there was a gendered expecta-
tion that men fight, which provided a strong incentive for men to embrace their
roles as soldiers. Not all men could fight because of age, health, or jobs, so those
who stayed home sought to justify their masculinity and their civic duty through
other forms of war service and nationalism. Those unwilling to support the war
suffered ostracism and prison. For men in occupation zones, the war meant inactiv-
ity, which threatened their sense of themselves as breadwinners, as heads of fami-
lies, and ultimately as males. Even though some resisted enemy occupation, many
men living in occupied regions felt inadequate. A similar feeling of helplessness
and inadequacy appears in accounts left by prisoners of war, whose imprisonment
might be tainted by a hint of cowardice or weakness. Like those men who could not
fight for a multitude of other reasons, prisoners tried to justify their patriotism in
alternative ways.
In short, men in every nation had to prove themselves in this war, whether or
not they were actively involved in battle. Opting out was not possible. Masculinity
played an important role in virtually all aspects of the war, and this collection helps
us reconsider how and why men served in an increasingly brutal conflict. Men liv-
ing in colonial empires sought to prove themselves not just as males but often in
racial terms. War service conferred citizenship and respect, or at least that is what
6i Gender and the Great War

many “marginal” groups of men thought would happen if they performed their civic
duty. Jews in the massive European empires of the day saw the war as a chance to
demonstrate their loyalty to state and nation, to gain legitimacy. Other members of
historically marginalized populations within the nation such as African-╉Americans
similarly sought to prove their worth as citizen-╉soldiers. Colonial subjects labored
and fought in multiple theaters of war with the idea that their patriotic acts would
prove their loyalty and their manliness to colonial governments. In all these cases,
gendered visions of what a man could and should be shaped public perception of
the war.

Women and the War

Gender also crucially defined the role of women. The eve of the First World War
saw dedicated activists across Europe and elsewhere vigorously campaigning to bring
full citizenship rights to women. Denied full enfranchisement in all the combatant
nations, an increasing number of women were arguing that their states needed to
grant them a voice in deciding the fates of their countries. As the international crisis
of June–╉July 1914 unfolded, women in the main states confronting the potential for
international violence (such as Austria-╉Hungary, France, Germany, Great Britain,
Italy, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Serbia) still had no officially sanctioned
political voice. They thus faced the potential outbreak of war indirectly, unable to
participate in political decision-╉making. The nations mobilizing for war tended to
see women as the wives, lovers, mothers, sisters, and daughters of combatants, but
not as the ones who could be called upon to wage war in its most traditional sense.
Thus, from the outbreak of war in 1914, some factors clearly set women apart from
their male counterparts.
No state compelled or requested women’s service as combatants. Mobilization
in 1914 meant calling up men. This is not to say that women had no public role.
For instance, although some nations, like France, were fearful that certain politi-
cal groups that espoused internationalist values (like socialists) might protest full-╉
scale mobilization, few were as concerned that women as a whole would obstruct
the mobilization for war. Some leaders of international feminist organizations asked
members to pressure governments to halt the rapid call to arms. However, few wom-
en’s voices publicly criticized their state officials or their nation’s stance once war was
actually declared, even if overt support for the war might have been less widespread
among women. Even so, while women were not called immediately to active mili-
tary service, all participant states demanded their loyalty and sacrifices. As the initial
phase of the First World War extended into 1915 and then into long years of action
7

Introduction j7
and waiting, enduring and suffering, the full panoply of what it meant to wage a
modern, total war engaged women more fully than prior wars.
Women took on an enormous range of active roles in and for their nations at
war. In terms of waged and volunteer labor for their wartime states, women served
in roles as diverse as agricultural laborers; ambulance, bus, tram, and trolley driv-
ers; clerks; cooks; doctors; domestic servants; drivers; engineers; factory workers;
forestry workers and foragers; machinists; nurses; police officers; railway workers;
secretaries; spies; telegraph and telephone operators; typists; and, in few extraordi-
nary circumstances, combatants. They filled in for absent men in communal labor,
religious organizations, and local charities; they created new organizations to cater
to the wartime needs of children, mothers, refugees, and, above all, soldiers. They
gained new visibility and new opportunities, even if their work was often couched
in terms of “doing their bit” and “for the duration.” Yet, one thing was clear by war’s
end—​their labor was vital to sustaining the war effort even if some aspects of their
work made their societies anxious.
In addition to women’s visible waged and unwaged work to sustain their nations’
war effort—​and just as important—​women continued to perform their domestic
tasks of homekeeping, child-​rearing, and emotional (and sometimes financial and
physical) support for their families. Wartime restrictions upon, and in some cases
lack of access to, food and fuel made carrying on daily home life even more challeng-
ing for women in many places. Women carried the burden of queuing for food and
managing meager rations. Yet, voices throughout the war continued to call upon
women to “keep the home fires burning” and safeguard an image of the tranquil
home life for which men made sacrifices of life, limb, and livelihood.
In addition, a few women were happy to claim the mantle of being separate from
the war. A manifesto issued by the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance (the
umbrella organization for women’s suffrage movements in individual nations)
proclaimed:

In this terrible hour, when the fate of Europe depends on decisions which
women have no power to shape, we, realising our responsibilities as the mothers
of the race, cannot stand passive by … . [W]‌e call upon the Governments and
Powers of our several countries to avert the threatened unparalleled disaster.2

And the war did divide feminists, with only a minority who continued to adhere
in public to the movement’s internationalist ideals and to advocate for peace in the
face of the virulent nationalism that emerged as the war got underway. This left a
complex legacy for the organized women’s movement and for women as individuals
in the aftermath.
8i Gender and the Great War

Why This Volume?

The centenary of the First World War in 2014–╉2018 offers an opportunity to reflect
upon the role of gender history in shaping our understanding of this pivotal inter-
national event. Ideas about gender, particularly about how men and women should
act, became newly contentious in many areas of the world as a result of this conflict.
From the moment of its outbreak, contemporary observers and postwar commenta-
tors viewed the gendered experiences of the war as being especially significant for
defining how the war can and must be understood. Over the past twenty-╉five years,
the scholarship on gender and this war has grown, yet there has never been a forum
such as the one that we present here that has sought to place so many of the varying
threads of this complex history into conversation with one another in a manner that
is at once accessible and provocative.3
The chapters assembled in this volume emerge from a series of roundtables pre-
sented at the 2014 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders, and
Sexualities that gathered scholars together to reflect on where the gender history of
the war stood at its hundredth anniversary. The book is organized to showcase the
various themes and to group together those that build upon earlier topics. While
each author has written with a transnational framework in mind, the realities of
uneven historical scholarship across these broad topics and the space limitations
of this volume leave inevitable gaps. The centrality of Eastern and Central Europe
to the conflict and its aftermath deserves much more attention than what we have
given it here, for instance.4 New work on Italy will also expand the field, as will his-
torical studies of the Ottoman Empire and sub-╉Saharan Africa. In short, there are
many exciting projects in the works, but we believe that even more scholarship is
necessary. Thus we anticipate that this initial focus on gender and significant inter-
secting categories of historical inquiry can play a key role in illuminating the war
on all its fronts. What we collectively hope this volume may do is spur interest in
investigating the gaps and questions that remain, providing even richer scholarship
on the absolutely crucial functions of gender in wartime.

Notes

1. Rhodes’s speech quoted in Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and
Imperialism, 1830–╉1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 34.
2. International Women’s Suffrage Alliance, International Manifesto of Women reprinted
in Votes for Women, August 7, 1914, and also Margaret R. Higonnet, ed., Lines of Fire: Women
Writers of World War I (New York, 1999).
9

Introduction j9
3. Two similar volumes are based more loosely around research essays: Christa Hämmerle,
Oswald Überegger, and Birgitta Bader Zaar, eds., Gender and the First World War
(Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), and Nicole Dombrowski, ed., Women and War in the
Twentieth Century: Enlisted with or without Consent (New York: Routledge, 1998).
4. One useful study in this area is Nancy M. Wingfield and Maria Bucur, eds., Gender and War
in Twentieth-​Century Eastern Europe (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006).
1
Gender and Citizenship
Kimberly Jensen

i
The First World War reinforced the links between masculinity, military ser-
vice, and citizenship but also offered the possibility for marginalized men, including
men of color and men in colonized states, and women of various communities, to
claim enhanced civic roles through patriotic service on the home and war fronts.
The world war was, for most combatant nations, a total war that required the trans-
formation of national economies for war production and the support of citizens
and residents. National leaders needed people to engage in the work of wartime
production and soldiering, to practice food rationing or conservation, and to fol-
low other government policies designed to result in victory. And the First World
War paralleled the expansion of movements for woman suffrage and reform in many
countries, movements that emphasized women’s contributions to state economies
and civic progress.
However, leaders of nation states reinforced traditional gender and racial prac-
tices in defining loyalty and citizenship. The growth in state bureaucracies and sur-
veillance on citizens and noncitizens developed in some cases into a war on civil
liberties during the conflict. Wartime violence and these attacks on civil liberties
caused many people to challenge state policies and to include civil liberties in new
conceptions of citizenship rights. The war also led many advocates to develop the
concept of a transnational or world citizenship that would allow people to work
together above and across nation states for reforms such as woman suffrage and
international peace. This chapter explores these contested meanings and practices of
10
╇1

Gender and Citizenship j 11


citizenship as women and men from a variety of groups and nations challenged and
redefined their civic roles.

Citizenship and Civil Liberties in Context

What does it mean to be a citizen of a particular nation, and who is eligible for
citizenship? What are the rights and obligations of individual citizens? The answers
to these questions have shifted across time and national boundaries and have been
framed by social and cultural ideas about gender and gender identity, sexuality,
race, ethnicity, immigration status, and class. When the First World War began in
1914, citizenship for residents of many Western imperial nations was based on male
military service to the state. Those men who were eligible and who fulfilled their
obligation of military service would, in return, be invested with the rights of citi-
zenship, including voting, office holding, and other elements of administering and
deciding on political questions in one’s community and nation. The practices of
racism and imperialism limited citizenship rights for men and women of color and
colonized status. Women as a group were not eligible for official military service,
and so they were “outside the boundaries of reciprocity and entitlement” that con-
ferred the rights of citizenship.1 The links between citizenship and military service
were also based on the idea of men as the protectors and women as the protected
in society.2
In the early twentieth century, people in many nations were engaged in vigor-
ous debates about the nature of, and qualifications for, citizenship. Across many
countries, women worked for the right to vote, to hold political office, and to help
shape policies that would reform their communities. Members of colonized states
and members of communities of color and ethnicity worked to address policies
that limited their political participation, engaging in campaigns against racism and
imperialism. Yet there was also resistance to these calls for change, and some politi-
cal leaders took steps to exclude immigrants, challenge reform policies, and limit the
rights of citizenship and privilege. The First World War erupted in the midst of these
currents of debate and reform. For those who opposed the war, for those who named
particular wartime violence against women, and for those who identified the war’s
role in the building of colonial empires, expanding the rights of citizenship became
an important goal in urgent calls for postwar change.
For some women and men excluded from state policies of citizenship or hav-
ing only limited civic roles, the war offered opportunities to support their nation’s
program and to define such active patriotism as service worthy of citizenship. By
undertaking the obligations of service to the state, they could claim the reciprocal
12 i Gender and the Great War

rights of citizenship. Men would need to work or fight, and women would need to
engage in industrial and agricultural work, to volunteer with Red Cross and Red
Crescent societies or the hundreds of other voluntary agencies. They would need
to let their husbands, sons, and fathers go to war. Through taxation, “fight or pay”
contributions, war bonds, and Liberty Loans, governments called on citizens and
residents to contribute to the war effort. Leaders used propaganda and coercion
and legislated against civil liberties to produce results in authoritarian regimes and
in more liberal nations. In the United States, for example, which remained officially
neutral until April 1917, Congress passed the Espionage Act in 1917 and the Sedition
Act in 1918 criminalizing opposition to the war and the military. The Habsburg
Empire eliminated civil liberties and censored most communication through a war-
time surveillance office. Leaders of the Ottoman Empire transferred some criminal
proceedings from civil to military courts. Many nations suspended jury trials. The
Russian military could detain or deport suspects without trial. Wartime officials in
Great Britain expanded the Defense of the Realm Act to encompass a wide range
of actions, from censorship of printed material thought harmful to the war effort
to sexual behavior.3

Gender, Wartime Service, and Citizenship

Across many nations, the wartime work of women made news, and women’s active
patriotic service formed a key part of women’s claims to a more complete female
citizenship. For example, hundreds of thousands of women engaged in voluntary
work on the home front, including providing bandages and comfort kits for soldiers
in national and empire branches of the Red Cross and Red Crescent. British women
joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD), and some women who were colonial
subjects in India and Australia engaged in such home front service to bolster their
claims for more representation and equality within the empire. Indigenous women
established the Six Nations Women’s Patriotic League in Ontario, Canada, to empha-
size their contributions to the wartime state.4 In the United States, women’s wartime
service included work under the umbrella organization the Woman’s Committee
of the Council of National Defense. More than 6,000 women volunteered for ser-
vice abroad, including work with the Red Cross, the Young Women’s Christian
Association, the Jewish Welfare Board, and the American Library Association.5
African American women across the nation engaged in war work to support black
troops and their families and established local branches of the Emergency Circle of
Negro War Relief. African American women also filed lawsuits to challenge racial
segregation and engaged in active protest against the East St. Louis Riot of 1917
13

Gender and Citizenship j 13


with a vigorous public awareness campaign, silent marches, and prayer meetings.6
In Los Angeles, California, women who were members of racial and ethnic minori-
ties in the city made their claims for patriotic citizenship in ethnically segregated
auxiliaries of the Red Cross, including Japanese American and Jewish women. At
Brownson House, a settlement house under Catholic auspices, Mexican American
women organized for Red Cross service. African American women worked within
the Harriet Tubman and Phyllis Wheatley auxiliaries.7
Other women served with national armies, and many of them thus made claims
for full inclusion as female citizens in military institutions. Women doctors provide
a strong example of this call for inclusion in the military as part of a more com-
plete female citizenship. They campaigned as professional women who claimed a
more equal place in military medicine and for more complete economic citizenship
that would include equality with male medical colleagues. Women physicians from
many nations who participated in national militaries and as volunteer war work-
ers faced powerful cultural ideas and practices about gender, work, wartime service,
and citizenship. They had broken barriers within the medical institutions of their
nations, claiming the right to pursue an equal medical education and practice, but
still faced considerable challenges to equality with men in their field. Many women
doctors saw wartime service as a way to demonstrate their professional skills but also
to expand their opportunities in the military workplace. Yet cultural representations
of women healers at war often focused on women as auxiliaries to men, unequal
partners in wartime medicine. This, too, stemmed from traditional associations
among masculinity, military service, and citizenship. The uneven gains women doc-
tors experienced during the war suggest that ideas about women as the “weaker sex”
continued to define the results.
When the war began, medical women numbered some 3,000 across Great Britain.
Many sought an official place within the British military, but when this was denied
them, they formed all-​female medical units to provide needed wartime medical care
and to demonstrate their skills and equality with male doctors. The largest and most
famous of the British all-​female medical units was the Scottish Women’s Hospitals
(SWH), organized by suffragist physician Elsie Inglis, a graduate of Edinburgh
Medical School. The Scottish Federation of Women’s Suffrage Societies sponsored
SWH units over the course of the conflict, with fourteen units serving in France,
Belgium, Serbia, Macedonia, Romania, and Russia. The SWH included women on
its staff from England, Wales, Ireland, Canada, and Australia.8
Women physicians in the United States, numbering some 6,000 during the war
years, also linked wartime medical service with a fuller economic citizenship for
women. The Medical Women’s National Association (MWNA), established in
1915, sponsored a registration drive to demonstrate women’s readiness for military
14 i Gender and the Great War

medical service, organized petitions, and lobbied the American Medical Association
for support. In the meantime, women physicians supported other avenues for war-
time medical service. Several all-​female medical units, modeled on the SWH, were
staffed entirely by women. The National American Woman Suffrage Association
(NAWSA) created the Women’s Oversea Hospitals with two units in France, and
the MWNA supported two French units and dispensaries under the title of the
American Women’s Hospitals during the conflict. Many other medical women
served at home and with voluntary organizations overseas such as the Red Cross.
At least seventy-​six were serving with various organizations by November 1918. They
included two African American women physicians living in France: Mary L. Brown,
a Howard University Medical School graduate with the Red Cross, and Harriet
Rice, who served in a French military hospital and was awarded the Reconnaissance
française. Fifty-​five women physicians served in the Army Medical Corps without
rank or commissions as contract surgeons, eleven had military duty overseas, and
forty-​five worked in US states and territories, including Puerto Rico.9
More numerous than female physicians were women nurses, who served while
reiterating claims for patriotic service but also professional and gender equality.
Nursing as a female profession had grown in industrializing nations in the late nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries, and many supporters hoped that exposure
of their successful work on the global stage of war would increase their status in
the medical profession. Yet female nurses faced powerful barriers for full and per-
manent inclusion in the institution of the military and as citizens. In France, the
Service de santé militaire established a category of medical worker in 1916 known
as the “temporary military nurse,” which underscored women’s needed but imper-
manent place in the military.10 Across the course of the conflict, more than 28,000
German women served in hospital and aid stations and in the occupied territories
in the Volunteer Nursing Corps. Yet the low salary (one-​quarter to one-​eighth of a
daily wage of factory work for women) meant that military nurses were primarily
elite women who did not necessarily want to engage in nursing as a profession.11
The Ottoman Red Crescent Society opened a school of nursing in 1914; another
school of nursing opened that same year at Istanbul University. During the war,
the Center for Women in Istanbul trained nurses and challenged cultural practices
that it believed were detrimental to women nurses by “maintaining that men and
women could work together.” Women “broke through their segregation, worked
together with male physicians, and took care of male patients at hospitals and on
battlefields.”12
Some nurses served as ambassadors and diplomats for their nations. Elite Austro-​
Hungarian Red Cross nurses visited prisoners of war in Russia in 1915 and 1916,
represented Austria-​Hungary, and used their connections to visit camps and direct
15

Gender and Citizenship j 15


relief.13 When Japan entered the war against the Central Powers, its leaders sent
Japanese Red Cross relief groups to act as medical ambassadors to the Allied nations
of Great Britain, France, and Russia. On their way to Great Britain in January 1915,
twenty-​two Japanese Red Cross nurses served 2,500 patients at the Netley Royal
Victoria Military Hospital from February to December 1915, in Japanese Red Cross
wards and British wards.14
In Great Britain, professional nurses were an official part of the military as mem-
bers of Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS). Reserve
nurses served in the Territorial Forces Nursing Service (TFNS) and the QAIMNS
Reserve. British women who wished to volunteer their services for wartime nurs-
ing joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD), an organization established in
1909. Nursing VAD membership consisted primarily of elite and upper-​middle-​class
women.15 Class and professional experience created conflict between rank-​and-​file
trained nurses and elite volunteers such as VAD Vera Brittain. Professional, working
nurses in the QAIMNS and the reserve corps hoped that the war would illustrate
the powerful need for trained nurses during and after the war. They were generally
women who saw the war as a way to demonstrate their economic citizenship and
medical professionalism and who believed that the war would expand their career
opportunities. These VADs, most of whom were elite women, most often under-
stood their wartime service as an expression of their patriotism and service to the
empire. They did not have the same experience of or commitment to professionaliza-
tion as did military nurses.16
In the United States, more than 21,480 women served in the Army Nurse Corps
during the First World War, 10,660 of them with the American Expeditionary Force
abroad. African American nurses, led by Adah Thoms and joined by community
organizations, lobbied across the war years for entrance into the Red Cross and Army
Nurse Corps. In the fall of 1918, in the midst of the global influenza pandemic and
crisis, eighteen African American nurses were accepted into the Army Nurse Corps
for service in two training camps for African American soldiers, Camp Sherman in
Ohio and Camp Grant in Illinois. During the conflict, no army nurse had any official
rank in the military. Nurses and their allies, including many supporters of woman
suffrage, mounted a campaign to change military regulations so that all army nurses
would be commissioned as officers. They waged this campaign for rank until 1920,
when army nurses received relative rank as officers but not on a male scale, without
many of the benefits and without complete military command authority. For many
male policymakers, the campaign for rank challenged the notion of female nurses as
symbols of self-​sacrifice serving soldiers and the nation. The compromise policy of
relative rank suggests that most could not accept women nurses as full citizens with
claims to equality through military service.17
16 i Gender and the Great War

From Wartime Service to Votes

When the First World War began in 1914, activists in many nations had already been
engaged in campaigns to win the right to vote for women, a right that had tradition-
ally been limited to elite men. These movements took place in a vibrant era of reform
in which many people worked to redefine women’s roles and participation in an
industrializing and technologically expanding age. The work of women during the
conflict certainly had an impact on various national struggles for woman suffrage,
but the effects of the war on votes for women were mixed.
In the United States, the war years and their aftermath brought an over seven-╉
decade struggle for women’s voting rights to a successful conclusion with ratifica-
tion of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Women in eleven US states and one
territory had achieved full voting rights by the time the nation entered the war
in April 1917. This meant that women in these locations could cast a vote in all
elections, from those in their cities and counties all the way to selecting members
of Congress and the president of the United States. Activists in some other states
had won partial voting rights such as the ability to vote in school elections or to
vote only in the election for US president, referred to as “presidential suffrage.”
During the war years, women in four other states won complete voting rights, and
women in eleven others secured the right to presidential suffrage. In 1919, the year
following the war’s end, both houses of Congress approved an amendment to the
US Constitution that provided for women’s full voting rights. The Nineteenth
Amendment was ratified on August 26, 1920, when three-╉quarters of state legisla-
tures voted to support it.18
The wartime momentum given to the woman suffrage question in the United
States was mirrored in other national movements. By the close of the conflict,
women in the new Soviet Union, Great Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany,
Poland, Hungary, Austria, Luxembourg, and Czechoslovakia had gained some vot-
ing rights. French feminists such as Marguerite de Witt-╉Schlumberger argued for
the vote for women as citizens in their own right and as a result of Frenchwomen’s
wartime service. Some policymakers such as Maurice Barrès argued that widows
and mothers of fallen soldiers should receive fuller civic rights and votes because
of their relationship to men who had sacrificed their lives for the nation, a way of
continuing to relate women’s citizenship to their family status rather than to them
as individuals. Others worried that politicized women would be the downfall of
the French nation. The debates on woman suffrage in the French legislature from
1919 to 1922 are significant because of the extent to which these arguments became
part of the discourse of wartime and its aftermath, even if women did not achieve
suffrage as a result. In both Britain and France, women’s contributions to war were
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feeling, at that moment, that Peggy was going from her for ever, and that made her very
sad.

The spring evening was closing in fast now; and, as the dog-cart disappeared from sight,
Miss Leighton turned and slowly retraced her footsteps towards the house, encountering
Barnes as she entered the front door. The maid looked at her mistress a trifle curiously,
and received a somewhat defiant glance in return.

"Tell Mrs. Ford I shall require my supper immediately, as I shall have to be up early in the
morning, and therefore shall go to bed in good time to-night, Barnes," Miss Leighton said,
in her usual cold tone.

"Yes, ma'am," Barnes replied. "I am glad, ma'am, that Mrs. Tiddy brought little Miss Peggy
to say good-bye to you," she ventured to add.

"I have said good-bye to the child for the present," Miss Leighton responded deliberately;
"but she too will soon be returning to town, and I have planned that we shall meet again."

CHAPTER XI
HOME AGAIN

"I SHOULD think they will be here very soon now!"

The speaker was Mrs. Pringle, who stood at the sitting-room window of her home, looking
out into the narrow street, one cold, wet, spring evening. Her arm was around Billy's
shoulders; and the little boy's face, which wore an expression of eager watchfulness, was
pressed close to the window-pane.

"Yes," Billy answered, "I hope so. It always seems so long when one is waiting, doesn't it,
mother? How it is raining!"

"I wish it had been a finer evening for Peggy's return," Mrs. Pringle remarked. "We must
keep the fire up."

She moved back from the window and put mare coals into the grate.

"We will give our little Sunbeam a warm welcome, at any rate," she added with a smile.

All day, she had gone about her household duties with the happiest of hearts, and every
now and again she had run upstairs to make sure that Peggy's bedroom was quite in order.
For her husband, who had gone to Cornwall a few days previously, was expected to bring
his little daughter home that night. Needless to say, Billy was no less delighted than his
mother at the prospect of so soon seeing Peggy again; whilst Sarah, in the kitchen, had
opened the door, that she might hear the expected cab pull up before the house, and kept
the kettle on the boil in readiness to make tea the minute the travellers should arrive.

"Here they are!" cried Billy excitedly, at last, and, followed by his mother, he rushed into
the passage, almost colliding with Sarah, who was hurrying from the kitchen, and flung
wide the front door, admitting as he did so a blast of cold wind.

"Don't go out into the rain, Billy," advised Mrs. Pringle, her face aglow with expectancy.
"See, your father is lifting Peggy out of the cab; he will bring her straight in."

The next minute, Peggy was in her mother's arms, rapturously returning her mother's
welcoming kiss; then came Billy's turn to be embraced, and after that, Sarah's. The little
girl's countenance was one beam of happiness, and her cheeks were so rosy that her
brother gazed at her in surprise.

"Why, Peggy, how you've altered!" he cried. "And I do believe you've grown!"

"I'm sure she has," Mrs. Pringle agreed. "She is looking remarkably well. She left home as
white as a lily, and she has returned like a red, red rose."

"Are you glad I've come home?" Peggy asked, not because she was in the least doubtful on
the point, but because it was so sweet to know she had been missed and how welcome
was her presence at home once more.

"Glad?" exclaimed Billy, "I should think we are! We've all of us missed you most dreadfully,
Peggy. Even Mr. Maloney noticed that the house seemed quite different without you!"

"Yes; but now our little Sunbeam has returned to us," Mrs. Pringle said lovingly, "and it is
such happiness to have her given back to us well and strong!"

"And has no one a welcome for me?" asked Mr. Pringle at that point. He had seen about
the luggage and dismissed the cabman, and now stood regarding the excited group with a
glance half humorous, half tender. "Have you forgotten that you have not seen me for
three whole days? Never mind," he continued, after he had kissed his wife and his little
son, "I am content to take the second place to-night. But Peggy and I are both tired and
hungry; so, suppose we have our tea at once—as soon as Peggy has removed her wraps."

A very pleasant meal followed; and afterwards the family drew round the fireplace, in a
circle, to talk.

"I've so much to tell you, that I don't know where to begin," Peggy remarked. "Oh, I do
think the very nicest part of going away on a visit is the coming home again!"

There was a general laugh at that, and Mr. Pringle said:

"That's good hearing, my dear. We left Cornwall bathed in glorious sunshine this morning,"
he continued, addressing his wife. "Your schoolfellow's home is in a most beautiful spot. I
cannot express how greatly I have enjoyed my three days' holiday at Lower Brimley. Both
Mr. and Mrs. Tiddy have been kindness itself, and never shall we be able to repay them for
all they have done for Peggy!"

"I was—oh, so sorry to say good-bye to them," the little girl said soberly, "and there was
Wolf—poor Wolf! He had to be shut up in the stable for fear he would follow us to the
station and want to go by train. He is such a dear, dear dog! You will love him, Billy, when
you see him!"

"Do you think I shall ever see him, Peggy?" Billy asked, anxiously. "Do you really think Mr.
Tiddy will remember to invite me to Lower Brimley in the summer holidays?"

"I am sure he will," the little girl replied positively. "I heard him mention it several times;
he won't forget, he always keeps his word."
"And what about Aunt Caroline?" Mrs. Pringle at length asked. "I was never more surprised
in my life than when I heard you and she had met!"

"Was it not strange?" Peggy said seriously. "You know she came from Penzance on purpose
to see Mr. Tiddy's daffodils, and she was so pleased with them."

"Did she find out who you were, then?"

"Oh, no—not until long after that—when she was lodging at Higher Brimley. I met her on
the beach and she spoke to me, and—and I talked rather much, for I told her my name—
she asked me, I think—and all about my accident. Even then she didn't say who she was.
But afterwards she came to Lower Brimley and asked permission to go around the garden
—Mr. Tiddy had told her she might—and Mrs. Tiddy and I went with her, and just before
she left she said I was distantly related to her and explained who she was. After that, she
was very nice and kind to me—very kind indeed!"

"But you don't like her, Peggy, do you?" cried Billy. "I thought her such a proud, cross old
woman!"

"She speaks in rather a proud way sometimes," Peggy allowed reluctantly, "but she isn't
cross when you know her—at least, she wasn't to me. She said she wouldn't have driven
away so quickly after I had been knocked down by her horse, if she had known I was
blind. Yes, I rather like her, but I don't suppose I shall ever meet her again, though I
should like to. And then there's Barnes—"

"Barnes? Is she still with Aunt Caroline?" broke in Mrs. Pringle, eagerly.

"Yes," nodded Peggy, "and she asked me such a lot of questions about you, mother. I like
Barnes. She told me about her poor afflicted brother, and—wasn't it strange?—Aunt
Caroline had never heard of him till I happened to speak of him to her."

"I dare say not, my dear," Mrs. Pringle answered, evincing no surprise. "I remember about
poor Barnes's brother," she proceeded. "He is not right in his mind, and Barnes helps
support him and her mother too. The mother must be a very aged woman now."

"Yes," the little girl answered. "Poor Barnes! Aunt Caroline used to speak so sharply to her
sometimes—I heard her—but that is her way, I suppose."

"It used to be," Mrs. Pringle admitted with a sigh, "and, from what you tell me, I imagine
she has not altered much these last ten years."

"I don't think she's a bit happy," Peggy said, shaking her golden head. "That seems very
sad, doesn't it? Barnes told the servants at Lower Brimley that Aunt Caroline has no
friends, because she always thinks people who are nice to her want her money."

"Ah!" exclaimed Mrs. Pringle understandingly, with a quick glance at her husband. "Poor
Aunt Caroline!"

She sat in silence after that, listening whilst Peggy expatiated at great length upon all the
delights of life at a farm. Billy drank in every word with keen interest, reflecting that some
day, not so very distant, he would most likely enjoy his share of the pleasures which his
sister explained so marvellously—considering she had been unable to see.

"I know everything was very beautiful," she said, in conclusion, "for there seemed to be
flowers everywhere, and the scent of the gorse on the cliffs was wonderful—I never smelt
anything so sweet or strong before! And the air was so warm, and the sun shone nearly
every day, and—"

"And now you have come back to rain and cold," interposed Mrs. Pringle; "you will feel it a
hardship, I fear, after the mild climate you've enjoyed of late and after having spent so
much time out-of-doors, to be cooped up in a small house again."

"I don't mind the rain and the cold in the very least," Peggy declared, "and I love our little
house. Oh, I'm so glad to be at home! Yes, indeed I am! I've enjoyed my visit to Cornwall;
but I think I've missed you all as much or more than you have missed me. I'm glad I went,
but I'm gladder still to be back again—to be able to hear your voices and put out my hands
and feel you are here! You would understand what that means, if you were blind. Oh, I
think I was never so happy in my life before as I am to-night."

"Thank God for that, my darling," Mrs. Pringle responded in a tremulous voice. "Oh, we
have much to thank Him for!" she added softly, as she remembered the pale, delicate little
girl she had seen off at Paddington railway station with a very heavy heart six weeks
previously and mentally compared her with the one—a picture of health and contentment
—who now nestled close to her side. She had prayed—oh, so earnestly!—that Peggy might
be restored to her well and strong, and her Father in Heaven had answered her prayer.

CHAPTER XII
AUNT CAROLINE'S DISAPPOINTMENT

THE first few days after Peggy's return home were very wet and cold, although it was late
spring. But one morning, she arose conscious of a change in the atmosphere and that the
sun was shining into her bedroom window, whilst the sparrows were twittering noisily
outside as though they had matters of great importance to discuss with each other.

"I think we are going to have a taste of spring weather at last," observed Mr. Pringle at the
breakfast table that morning. "There's the promise of a beautiful May day, and I hope," he
continued, addressing his wife, "that you will manage to get out for a while in the sunshine
—you and Peggy."

"I want to do so," Mrs. Pringle replied. "I have some shopping to do first of all, and
afterwards we may, perhaps, extend our walk."

Accordingly Peggy and her mother spent most of the morning out-of-doors. They were
both in excellent spirits, and though, of course, they had to take their walk in the streets,
they thoroughly enjoyed it. Mrs. Pringle looked into the shops and told her little daughter
what the windows contained; and they bought a bunch of wallflowers from a
costermonger's barrow, for a penny, which smelt almost as sweet as those at Lower
Brimley, Peggy declared, and she wondered if they had come from Cornwall—that corner of
the world which, to the blind child, would always be remembered as a paradise of flowers.

Then, on their way home, they encountered Mr. Maloney, whom Peggy had not met since
her return. He turned and walked with them as far as their own door, listening with a
rather preoccupied air, Mrs. Pringle thought, to the little girl's chatter, and watching her
animated countenance with an expression of grave scrutiny in his kindly eyes.

"I want a private conversation with you and your husband, Mrs. Pringle," he remarked. "If
I call this evening, shall I find you both disengaged?"

"Yes," she assented, adding anxiously, "there is nothing wrong, is there? You have no bad
news to tell us?"

"Oh, no!" he responded, with a reassuring smile. "Please do not imagine that for a
moment. I will call this evening, then, about seven."

Peggy wondered what Mr. Maloney could have to say to her parents in private. And Mr.
Pringle expressed astonishment when his wife informed him at dinner-time of the reason
the Vicar had assigned for his proposed call. Whilst Billy, though he made no remark, was
filled with intense curiosity, and by the evening had become quite excited, and found great
difficulty in concentrating his mind to prepare his lessons for the following day.

Mr. Pringle had given orders that the Vicar was to be shown into the music-room, as the
small apartment was called which was apportioned to the use of the master of the house.
And as soon as Mrs. Pringle, who had been sewing in the sitting-room, heard Sarah admit
Mr. Maloney punctually at the hour he had appointed, she laid aside her work, and the next
moment, the children were alone.

Billy continued to pore over his lesson books, whilst Peggy sat opposite to him at the table,
her busy fingers engaged in knitting a sock, one of a pair she was making for her father.
Sarah had taught the little girl the accomplishment of knitting during the long evenings of
the previous winter, and the pupil did her teacher great credit. There had been silence in
the room, except for the click of Peggy's knitting-needles, for some minutes, when the
little girl suddenly dropped her work, and springing to her feet, stood listening intently.

"What is it?" asked Billy, glancing at her quickly, and noting that she had grown very pale.
"What do you hear?"

"Nothing, now," she answered tremulously. "But I thought—I thought—I suppose it was my
fancy!"

"What did you think you heard?" he questioned curiously. "Why, you have turned quite
white! What startled you, Peggy?"

"I thought I heard mother crying, but I suppose I was wrong. I don't hear anything now."

Billy went to the door, opened it, and listened; but nothing could be heard except a
murmur of voices from the music-room. He shut the door and returned to the table.

"Why should mother cry?" he demanded, uneasily.

"Didn't you tell me Mr. Maloney said nothing was wrong?"

"Yes," Peggy responded, "and he wouldn't have deceived us, I know."

"Then mother wouldn't cry for nothing!"

"I expect it was my mistake, Billy."


More than half an hour passed—an hour—and at last the children heard the music-room
door open and footsteps in the passage. Then the front door opened and shut, and a
moment afterwards, Mr. and Mrs. Pringle entered the sitting-room without their visitor.

One glance at his mother told Billy that his sister's sharp ears had not deceived her, for
there were traces of recent tears on Mrs. Pringle's face. She crossed the room and took a
chair by her little daughter's side, and her voice bespoke strong emotion as she said:

"Peggy, dear, we have decided to tell you what brought Mr. Maloney here to-night.
Yesterday, he had a visit from Aunt Caroline, who wishes to—to—"

"Oh, I know!" cried Peggy joyfully, as her mother hesitated. "She wishes to be friendly with
you, mother! Isn't it that?"

"No, dear," Mrs. Pringle replied sadly. "She has no desire to have anything to do with any
of us but you. She would like to adopt you, Peggy—to have you to live with her—"

"Oh mother!" broke in the little girl. "No! No!"

"That is what she wishes. She offers to bring you up and provide for you, and to make you
a rich woman some day. But your father and I have declined her offer, Peggy darling. We
will keep our little daughter and trust to Providence to take care of her future."

"You have been crying," said Peggy distressfully, "and I can hear the tears in your voice
now. Oh, don't cry, mother! What can Aunt Caroline be thinking of, to imagine you and
father would let her adopt me! As though I could leave you all to go and live with her!"

"I knew she was a nasty old woman!" cried Billy, in tones of the greatest indignation. "And
now I know she is cruel too! It is cruel of her to wish to take Peggy away from us! And the
idea of her going to Mr. Maloney and—"

"Hush, Billy!" admonished Mr. Pringle. "She went to Mr. Maloney because she knew he was
our friend," he proceeded. "You must not misjudge her; certainly she did not mean to be
cruel. I have no doubt she imagines she is acting kindly; but she does not understand us
or realise that Peggy would not be happy separated from the members of her own family.
We have talked over Miss Leighton's offer with Mr. Maloney, and we have declined it. I
think we are right, and Mr. Maloney thinks so too; but he could not well refuse to put Miss
Leighton's offer before us, as she had made a point of his doing so. To-morrow he will give
her our reply, and I fear she will be very angry as well as disappointed; but we cannot part
with our little Sunbeam," he concluded tenderly.

"Did she want me to live with her altogether?" Peggy asked wonderingly, taking her
mother's hand and holding it in a firm clasp.

"Yes, dear. She said you might come home sometimes—that she would not object to your
coming to see us now and again, but—oh, Peggy, Peggy!" And poor Mrs. Pringle caught the
little girl in her arms and kissed her passionately. "I hope we haven't been selfish," she
continued, "but God gave you to us, and I cannot think it would be right to give you up for
the sake of worldly advantages. No, I cannot think that! You have always had a happy
home, have you not, Peggy?"

"Oh, so happy!" the little girl answered earnestly. "Why do you cry, mother—when I am
not going to leave you?"

"I am very foolish, I dare say," said Mrs. Pringle. "But it hurts me to think Aunt Caroline
could imagine I would give up my own child."
"Poor woman, she over-estimates the worth of her money," Mr. Pringle remarked, with a
pitying note in his voice. "She does not understand that there are things even in this world
not to be purchased with gold."

"Why should she want to adopt me?" questioned Peggy wonderingly, turning her flushed
face towards her father. "It is not even as though I wasn't blind! Why doesn't she adopt
some little girl who has no mother or father or brother to love her? Why should she want
me?"

"Because, somehow, you have touched a soft spot in her heart, little Sunbeam," Mr. Pringle
answered. "I can think of no other reason. Poor Miss Leighton! I am afraid she will be very
disappointed when she hears we cannot favour her plan."

"Poor Aunt Caroline!" sighed Peggy. "Why can't she be friendly with us all, and come and
see us and be nice like she was when she came to tea at Lower Brimley?" And she shook
her head sorrowfully as she thought of the old lady, so rich in money, so poor in other
ways.

Billy, looking at his sister, wondered at the regretful expression of her face. He could not
tell, and he certainly would have been amazed, had he known that her tender heart was
ready to pour a portion of the wealth of its affection upon her whom he regarded, not
unnaturally, as one of the proudest and most disagreeable of people, and he felt
triumphant as he reflected that Miss Leighton would be disappointed at finding herself
balked in her selfish plan.

When, on the following day, Miss Leighton heard from Mr. Maloney that Mr. and Mrs.
Pringle had considered her offer and courteously declined it, she made no comment on
their decision whatever. But she was even more disappointed than Billy had anticipated she
would be, and there was more of sorrow than of anger in her heart. Briefly she informed
Barnes that Peggy's parents had refused to allow her to adopt the child.

"You were right, Barnes," she admitted with a sigh. "You thought my niece would refuse
my offer, did you not?"

"Yes, ma'am," Barnes answered briefly. She said no more, for in her heart she was
confident that Peggy would be better and happier at home.

CHAPTER XIII
PREPARING FOR CHRISTMAS

FOR many months, the Pringle family heard no more of Miss Leighton. Spring gave place
to summer; and in the early autumn Billy paid his visit to Cornwall, returning, after a
never-to-be forgotten six weeks' holiday, with Mr. and Mrs. Tiddy, who spent a short while
in London, during which time they went to see Miss Leighton, mindful of the promise which
they had made to her.

But, although the old lady received her Cornish acquaintances with every sign of cordiality
and pleasure, she never once mentioned Peggy, and when Mrs. Tiddy spoke of her, she
quickly changed the conversation, so that her visitors came to the conclusion that her
liking for the little blind girl had been merely a passing fancy, and that she had lost the
interest she had certainly once entertained for the child. Such, however, was not the case.

It was the end of September when the Tiddys returned to their Cornish home; and shortly
afterwards Miss Leighton had a long and serious illness, the result of a neglected cold.
When she had recovered and was able to dispense with the services of the trained nurse,
who, with Barnes, had nursed her back to health, it was December, and every one was
preparing for Christmas.

The season of peace and goodwill never brought much happiness to Miss Leighton
nowadays; but it made many calls upon her purse. And when she had written several
cheques to be sent to the various charities to which she was a regular contributor, she
generally considered she had done all that could be reasonably expected of her for her
fellow creatures.

But this year, as she sat by the fire in the drawing-room of her London house, one
afternoon about a week before Christmas, a sense of unusual dissatisfaction with herself
began to creep over her. Memory was busy with her; and, gazing into the fire, she pictured
a little figure clad in a shabby blue serge coat and skirt and a Tam o' Shanter cap, and saw
once more a fair face with a halo of golden curls around it—a happy face, beautiful with
that inward peace and light which only God can give. Then, in her imagination, she heard a
clear, child's voice say:

"But I don't think she can be really charitable, if she isn't kind in little ways and if she's
unforgiving!"

Miss Leighton winced as she recalled the words and the decided tone in which they had
been uttered. How the child's judgment of her had rankled in her heart! It had hurt her at
the time it had been given, though she had never resented it: it hurt her a great deal more
now.

"I would have been kind to Peggy, if her parents would have let me," she thought. "There
is nothing I would have denied her. I should like to do something to please her—to add to
her happiness this Christmas. How I should like to see her again! She was such a bright,
contented little girl! When I was ill, she was continually in my thoughts, and one night, I
fancied I heard her singing that hymn about light at evening time—she has a very sweet
voice. I wonder if Margaret would let the child come and see me? I hardly like to ask her a
favour, but I long to see Peggy once more. Ah, here's Barnes!"

The maid had been to match some silks for a piece of fancy-work her mistress was
making; but Miss Leighton was not in the mood to look at her purchases now.

"Sit down, Barnes," she said. "I want to speak to you."

"Yes, ma'am," Barnes replied, taking a chair and glancing at her mistress inquiringly. There
was a better understanding between these two than there had been formerly, for each had
discovered of late, that the other had a heart; and Barnes had nursed Miss Leighton
devotedly during her long illness, a fact Miss Leighton was not likely to forget.

"I suppose the shops are very gay?" Miss Leighton questioned.

"Yes, ma'am, they are full of Christmas presents."

"And doubtless you've made some purchases to send to your mother and brother?"
Barnes assented, a pleased flush rising to her pale cheeks at the unusual kindness of her
mistress's tone. She was emboldened to give Miss Leighton a list of the articles she had
bought to send home to her people.

"I pack up a hamper for them every Christmas," she explained in conclusion, "and my poor
brother is always so excited to see it unpacked."

"But would it not be much less trouble to you to send your mother the money you spend
and let her buy what she wants herself?" Miss Leighton inquired.

"Perhaps so, ma'am; but that would not be half so much pleasure to mother or to me. I
like thinking and planning how I shall fill the hamper with those things which I know will be
most acceptable, and when mother receives it and takes out its contents, she knows I've
borne her wants in mind. I've knitted her a nice warm shawl, and she'll be much prouder
of it, because I've made it, than if I'd bought it ready made."

"I see, Barnes. I wonder what sort of Christmas my little grand-niece will spend."

Barnes started, and a somewhat guilty expression crossed her countenance as she
answered hurriedly:

"A very happy one, I expect. Children mostly love Christmas time, and she has a very
happy home."

"How do you know?" Miss Leighton asked suspiciously.

"I— I've been there, ma'am. I went to St. John's one Sunday afternoon to hear Mr.
Maloney preach at a children's service, and I saw Miss Peggy there with her mother and
brother. After the service, outside the church, I spoke to them, and Mrs. Pringle asked me
to their house to have a cup of tea—and I went."

"Well?" said Miss Leighton, with repressed eagerness in her voice. "What is the place like?"

"The house, ma'am? It's one of a terrace, very small but comfortable and homely. Perhaps
I ought to have told you that I'd been there, but I did not like to mention it."

"Has my niece altered much?" Miss Leighton asked after a brief pause.

"No, ma'am, very little. She inquired for you and looked so sorry when she heard how ill
you'd been, and Miss Peggy said—" Barnes paused abruptly in some confusion.

"Well, what did Miss Peggy say? I insist upon your telling me."

"She said, 'Poor Aunt Caroline! How dreadful it would have been if she had died and we
had never known! How I wish she would be friends with us all! She used to be so nice in
Cornwall.' That's what she said, ma'am, shaking her curly head—you remember how she
used to do that? It's natural she shouldn't understand how you feel towards her mother."

Miss Leighton sighed. During her late illness she had been brought face to face with death;
and, for the first time, doubts of herself had assailed her, and she had seen her unforgiving
spirit in its true light. Pride had always been her stumbling-block through life; and it had
been her pride which had suffered when her niece, to whom in her way she had really
been attached, had elected to marry the hardworking music-master who was now the
organist of St. John's.
Her only reason for objecting to Mr. Pringle as her niece's husband had been because he
had been poor. She had always thought so much of riches, but they had never brought her
happiness; as a matter of fact, they had stood between her and her fellow creatures, they
had warped her sympathies; and sadly and regretfully, the woman of great wealth
admitted to herself that though she had given her money to clothe the naked and feed the
poor, it had profited her nothing, for the spirit of charity had never been hers.

"I am an old woman, and no one cares for me," she thought. "The love I might have had, I
deliberately put away. I should not be lonely to-day, if I had not cast Margaret aside when
she married. How she wept when I said I would never willingly look on her face again, and
I thought it was my money she was regretting, not me!"

Aloud she said:

"Does Mr. Maloney hold a children's service every Sunday afternoon, Barnes?"

Then, as Barnes assented, she continued: "I have heard high praises of his preaching, and
I should like to hear one of his sermons. If I go to St. John's next Sunday afternoon, will
you accompany me?"

"Certainly, ma'am," Barnes responded promptly, her face showing the intense amazement
she felt. She regarded her mistress with anxious scrutiny, marvelling at the softened
expression on her countenance. She hoped she was not going to be ill again.

"Perhaps we shall see Miss Peggy there," she proceeded; "but, if so, I expect her mother
will be with her. I suppose you will not speak to them, ma'am?"

"I cannot tell," Miss Leighton answered musingly. "I—I shall be guided by circumstances."

"Oh, ma'am!" cried Barnes eagerly. "Don't be angry with me for saying this; but, if you
could bring yourself to forgive Mrs. Pringle—"

"That will do," broke in Miss Leighton with a return of her usual imperious manner. "I can
imagine what you were about to say. No, I'm not angry. You're a well-meaning soul,
Barnes, but—you may go!"

Barnes needed no second bidding. She slipped quietly out of the room, fearing she had
done more harm than good; whilst Miss Leighton leaned back in her easy chair, a prey to
anxious thoughts. She had said she would go to St. John's on the following Sunday, and
she meant to keep her word, for she really was curious to hear Mr. Maloney preach, and
she hoped she might at any rate catch a glimpse of Peggy, though she determined, now,
that she would not speak to her. How could she ignore the mother and notice the child?

CHAPTER XIV
CONCLUSION

IT was Sunday afternoon. The children's service at St. John's was nearly at an end; and
now the Vicar had ascended into the pulpit to address a few simple words to his
congregation before giving out the number of the concluding hymn. He took for his text
the Saviour's promise, "He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness," and, in the first
place, reminded his hearers that in a very few days, they would be commemorating the
birth of Him Who is called "The Light of the World." Would they not try to follow Him? he
asked.

Then he pictured the childhood of Jesus, and many a pair of bright young eyes grew
earnest and thoughtful as their owners' interest was chained by the story which the Vicar
knew so well how to tell, pointing out to the children that the Christ-Child should be their
pattern, that, like Him, they should be good, and kind, and obedient. And that, if they
trusted in Him, He would be their Saviour and their Friend.

Finally, he explained that darkness meant selfishness and sin, and that the child who was
untruthful, or dishonest, or unkind, was walking in darkness, apart from God. And that to
follow Jesus, they must learn to be gentle, and pitiful, and loving, and faithful in word and
deed: then would Christ's promise be for them—"He that followeth Me shall not walk in
darkness!"

It was a very short sermon, but so simple that no child could fail to understand it; and
when it was over, and the Vicar descended from the pulpit, Peggy Pringle, who, seated by
her brother's side, had listened to every word Mr. Maloney had said with the closest
attention, turned her face to Billy with a pleased smile curving her lips, and thus allowed
an old lady close behind her, a sight of her profile.

The old lady, who was no other than Miss Leighton, felt her heart begin to beat unevenly
as she recognised Peggy. She had been on the lookout for her all through the service; but
the church was so full of children that she had not picked out her little great-niece
amongst so many, and lo! All the while she had been within reach of her hand.

In another minute the congregation had arisen, and with a dream-like sensation, Miss
Leighton once more listened to the same hymn Peggy had sung to her in Cornwall months
before:

"Holy Father, cheer our way


With Thy love's perpetual ray:
Grant us every closing day
Light at evening time."

Tears dimmed the old lady's eyes, and a softening influence stole into her proud heart; and
when, at the conclusion of the hymn, the congregation knelt in prayer, Miss Leighton
covered her face with her hands and prayed fervently that she, who had walked in
darkness so long, might be guided into the way of light.

"Barnes, I must speak to Peggy," she said in an agitated voice, as she and her maid left
the church and stood under the lamp outside. "Do not let her pass us by."

"She is with her brother, ma'am," Barnes answered. "I do not think Mrs. Pringle is here."

At that instant Peggy and Billy appeared, hand in hand, and Miss Leighton stepped quickly
forward; but, immediately, Billy put himself between her and his sister.

"Go away!" he cried indignantly, for he had recognised Miss Leighton, and the wild idea
that she might wish to lure Peggy away from him, then and there had flashed through his
mind. "I'm not going to let you touch her!"

"What do you mean?" demanded Miss Leighton in surprise. "Peggy! It's I—Aunt Caroline!
Won't you speak to me, child?"

At the sound of the well-remembered voice the little girl flushed rosily, a look of
astonishment and—Miss Leighton saw she was not mistaken—of joy lighting up her face;
seeing which, Billy allowed her to receive the old lady's warm embrace, though he still
retained a firm grasp of her hand.

"How are you, Peggy?" Miss Leighton began. "You look very well," she continued, without
waiting for a reply. "We—Barnes and I—came to hear your friend Mr. Maloney preach, and
I thought I should like a word with you. We sat close behind you in church."

"Did you?" said Peggy, smiling. "Wasn't it a nice sermon? And we had my favourite hymn!
Oh, Aunt Caroline," she proceeded sympathetically, "we were so sorry to hear you had
been ill. Are you really quite well now? Yes. Oh, I'm so glad! Oh, Barnes, how do you do?
Aunt Caroline, this is Billy. Billy, you remember Aunt Caroline, don't you? You know you
saw her once before and you said you would know her again."

Billy had no alternative but to shake hands with Miss Leighton. And, now he came to
regard her more closely, she did not look the sort of person who would steal his sister from
him. He thought he read goodwill towards himself in her face, as he scrutinised it in the
light of the lamp near which they were standing, and she showed no resentment for the
decidedly rude way in which he had treated her, the real fact being that she had guessed
the impulse which had prompted his strange behaviour. For some minutes, he watched her
talking to Peggy whilst Barnes stood aside patiently waiting. Then, he reminded his sister
that if they did not go home, their mother would wonder what had become of them.

"Yes," agreed Peggy, "we mustn't wait any longer. Mother's at home alone—it's Sarah's
afternoon out—and she's always anxious if we're later than she expects us."

"One moment more," said Miss Leighton. "I must wish you a very happy Christmas before
we part, and I want you to tell me what I can give you for a present. Choose whatever you
like. And Billy—he must choose something too!"

"Oh, how kind of you!" cried Peggy. Whilst Billy's eyes glistened with delight, and a look of
approval settled on his face—approval of this great-aunt of his, against whom he had
entertained such a strong prejudice before.

"I want to do something to add to your happiness," Miss Leighton said, in a voice which
trembled with an emotion which she tried in vain to repress.

"Do you, Aunt Caroline?" the little girl questioned earnestly. "Do you, indeed?"

"Yes, my dear—"

"Then if you really and truly want to add to my happiness," Peggy broke in excitedly,
"you'll come home with us now—we've not far to go—and be friends with mother again!
Oh, do come! It grieves mother dreadfully to think you're angry with her! But, you're not
angry any longer, are you?"

Miss Leighton could not say she was, for her bitterness against Peggy's mother had been
slowly fading away since she had known Peggy herself. Her head was in a whirl with
conflicting thoughts. But she felt she must accept or decline her little niece's invitation at
once—she could not discuss it there in the street.
"My dear, I cannot—" she was beginning, when a rush of tenderer, better feelings than she
had experienced for years filled her heart and caused her to hesitate. She looked at
Peggy's expectant face with its sightless blue eyes, and the last remnant of her pride died
away, though she repeated, "I cannot, I cannot!"

But the sharp ears of the blind child had caught the note of indecision in the other's tone,
and taking the old lady by the hand she said persuasively:

"Come, Aunt Caroline, we will go on, and Barnes and Billy will follow. I know the way quite
well. Oh, do come!"

And, much to Barnes's astonishment, and Billy's intense excitement, Miss Leighton
answered in a voice which no longer wavered, but had become decided and firm:

"To please you, little Sunbeam, I will!"

* * * * *

"Here's wonderful news from the Pringles!" exclaimed Mrs. Tiddy on Christmas morning, as
she stood in the hall at Lower Brimley, ready to start for church with her husband, and
glanced hastily through the letter she held in her hand—one of several which the postman
had just delivered. "I cannot stay to read all Margaret says now, but I see she has had a
visit from her aunt, and there must have been a complete reconciliation, for—fancy,
Ebenezer!—the old lady is going to dine with them to-day!"

"I'm heartily glad to hear it," Mr. Tiddy responded. "Depend upon it, Peggy has brought
that about—the reconciliation, I mean. But come, my dear, or we shall be late for church."

Then as they passed down the garden path, side by side, he continued:

"I always felt there was One above Who arranged that Miss Leighton and Peggy should
meet here and get to know each other. I expect the old lady will have a happier Christmas
to-day than she has had for many a long year."

And Mr. Tiddy was right, for this year, Miss Leighton found fresh beauty in the angels'
message of peace and goodwill, and her Christmas Day was a very happy one, spent in her
niece's home. God had softened her proud heart by the unconscious influence of the blind
child, and He was granting her light in the evening time of her life. Miss Leighton had
never felt so rich before as she did on this Christmas Day.

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