CLIO TALKS BACK: “It is the Women Who Make the Soldiers”

This week is the 100th anniversary of the German invasion of France – and the beginning of the military cataclysm that wrecked Europe and has affected us all since. All this the result of an assassination in Sarajevo in late June, and the month of failed diplomatic efforts that followed. (France had done nothing except to come to the support of its ally Russia, which was supporting the Serbs against the Austrians, who were allied with Germany). Clio’s previous blog was on this subject.

Clio has since discovered a novel by the best-selling French writer, Marcelle Tinayre (1870-1948), called (in its English translation) To Arms! Published in 1915, it explores the varied reactions of ordinary Parisians as seen through the eyes of one woman during two days (the 31st of July and 1st August 1914 – just 100 years ago) of the run-up to the German invasion of France– when Parisians had learned that the German army was mobilizing for a strike, but hadn’t yet launched it.

In Tinayre’s novel, one older woman who is the concierge in the building where the main character, Simone, lives, exclaims, weeping, on how hard war is on mothers of sons:

“If there were women in the government, war would be ended! It is the soldiers who make the battles, but it is the women who make the soldiers. 

Between you and me, we always think about saving our children. I cannot think that a German mother has a different heart from mine! There are not two ways of bringing a child into the world, and not two ways for him to leave it, and not two ways of suffering when we lose him. Nature is everywhere the same . . . .” 

And the author remarks:

“The cry of distracted maternity, of naked and savage instinct, resounded through Simone’s whole being. The old concierge with grey hair, in the rooms furnished with mahogany, seemed to her a symbolic figure of the Mater Dolorosa. No doubt, at this moment, despatches running on the telegraph wires, or sent on air waves, were carrying the same news to France, Germany, and Russia. Everywhere, the women who had not wished to believe in the catastrophe so incomprehensible to their simple minds, were brutally crushed before the reality. . . . Everywhere. And the women of the Russian huts, primitive souls who knew nothing of the universe, and the prolific German women who lived in subjection to men, and the French women passionately devoted to their sons, all, submitting to the law, faithful to their duty but equally tortured, uttered the same cry, the unavailing cry of the mothers which, from the time of Hecuba and Rachel, resounds eternally from age to age.” 

And yet wars continue, and mothers continue to wail. Ten million men died in World War I and some twenty million were wounded. An entire generation was sacrificed in the course of four bloody years. Wars continue today in many parts of the world. How long will it be before women and men put a halt to such senseless slaughter?

Source: To Arms! (La Veillée des Armes): An Impression of the Spirit of France. Authorized translation from the French of Marcelle Tinayre by Lucy H. Humphrey, with a preface by John H. Finley (New York, 1918; originally published in France in 1915).

CLIO TALKS BACK: World War and Women

2014 marks the centenary of the outbreak of World War I (1914-1918).  On 28 June in Sarajevo,  the heir to the throne of the Dual Monarchy (Austria-Hungary) Franz-Ferdinand and his morganatic wife Sophie (the mother of their four children) was assassinated by a local terrorist.

            This tragic event led, within a month, because of the complex of secret diplomatic alliances between nations that fell into play, to the German Army’s swift invasion and occupation of Belgium and the northern part of France. 

            Thus began a European (then world) war that lasted for four long and brutal years, with many fighting fronts, much trench warfare, and – worst of all – horrific casualties. Airplanes became a weapon of war and poison gas was introduced. France alone lost 1.3 million men, and hundreds of thousands more were maimed for life or suffered severe psychological damage. Total war casualties are generally agreed to have topped 20 million. 

Most women in the combatant nations supported their country’s war effort, postponing their fight for the vote and other desirable reforms; victory seemed paramount. They took over men’s labor in the fields and factories, including the munitions plants.  By 1918, some 1.5 million women worked in building arms. There were a few women, however, who took a stand for peace. One of these was a French teacher and union administrator named Hélène Brion (1882-1962).

            In late 1917, Hélène Brion and several others were arrested and charged with treason; they were vilified by the mainstream press. They were tried in a military court in late March 1919. Brion was convicted, but her three-year prison sentence was suspended. 

            The unusual part of this trial was Hélène Brion’s statement of defense, in which she invoked her status as a non-citizen under French law and claimed the intrinsic links between her work for peace and her feminist commitment. She talked back to power in a military court! She speaks to the difficulty women faced in ostensible democracies where women had no say in the making of laws (French women did not obtain the vote until 1944).

            Here, in Clio’s English translation, is her statement. Her words are still worth reading and pondering in today’s troubled times.

            “I appear before this court charged with a political crime; yet I am denied all political rights.

            “Because I am a woman, I am classified de plano by my country’s laws, far inferior to all the men of France and the colonies.  In spite of the intelligence that has been officially recognized only recently, in spite of the certificates and diplomas that were granted me long ago, before the law I am not the equal of an illiterate black man from Guadeloupe or the Ivory Coast. For he can participate by means of the ballot, in directing the affairs of our common country, while I cannot. I am outside the law.

“The law should be logical and ignore my existence when it comes to punishments, just as it is ignored when it comes to rights. I protest against its lack of logic.

“I protest against the application of laws that I have neither wished for nor discussed.

“This law that I challenge reproaches me for having held opinions of a nature to undermine popular morale. I protest even more strongly and I deny it!  My discreet and nuanced propaganda has always been a constant appeal to reason, to the power of reflection, to the good sense that belongs to every human being, however small the portion.

“Moreover, I recall, for form’s sake, that my propaganda has never been directed against the national defense and has never called for peace at any price: on the contrary, I have always maintained that there was but one duty, one duty with two parts: for those at the front, to hold fast; for those at the rear, to be thoughtful.

            “I have exercised this educational action especially in a feminist manner, for I am first and foremost a feminist. All those who know me can attest to it. And it is because of my feminism that I am an enemy of war.

            “The accusation suggests that I preach pacifism under the pretext of feminism. This accusation distorts my propaganda for its own benefit. I affirm that the contrary is true, and it is easy for me to prove it.  I affirm that I have been a militant feminist for many years, well before the war; that since the war began I have simply continued; and that I have never reflected on the horrors of the present without noting that things might have been different if women had had a say in matters concerning social issues.

[. . . . .]

“I am an enemy of war because I am a feminist. War represents the triumph of brute strength, while feminism can only triumph through moral strength and intellectual values. Between the two there is total contradiction.

            

“I do not believe that in primitive society the strength or value of woman was inferior to that of men, but it is certain that in present-day society the possibility of war has established a totally artificial scale of values that works to women’s detriment.