SHELLS; AND OTHER SHELLS ( Written by request for the Magazine published on behalf of the Munition Workers of Georgetown, Paisley ) A THOUGHT

In one of the finest and tenderest poems ever written by our last great Laureate, Alfred Tennyson, whose departure from this world closed, for the time, the reign of true English lyrical melody, there occur these delicately beautiful lines:—

How often we have seen such shells as these!—and how little have we associated the familiar name of “shell” with any thought of war or “shock” or bloodshed! Holding a sea-shell close against our ears we listen in fancy to the solemn music of the ocean surging through its hollow cavity,—the ocean with its sweeping thunderous harmony,—though all the time we know it is but the sound of our own life-blood pouring through our veins and pulsing upon our senses. And now, when we talk of “shells,” we mean something vastly different to the “small and pure as a pearl” object which moved a great Poet to song—for the “pure” thing was the work of God, and “a miracle of design” wrought to suit the needs of the “little living will that made it stir on the shore”; but the “shells” we have to do with are man’s work, made to destroy all living wills that come in contact with them! In their terrific way they too are “miracles of design,” for their cavities hold death and scatter it broadcast. Still more wonderful it is to realise the fact that women’s hands have been taught and trained to prepare this flying death—women’s hands, surely formed by nature for tenderness and caressing, for soothing and consoling! How, then, has it chanced that they should adapt themselves to such dire uses? Why do they labour so strenuously and eagerly to make weapons for the armoury of the King of Terrors? Women’s hands! What charming and poetic things have been said and written about them! Think of the hands in Fra Angelico’s picture of the “Angel of the Annunciation” where the dainty tapering fingers are as exquisitely delicate as the buds of the lilies they hold! Or, recall the subtle beauty of Heine’s description of the hand of an unknown lady, resting white and beautiful on the carved edge of a confessional in a dark cathedral aisle, the owner of the hand being too enshrouded in shadows to be visible.

“So still and pure was that lovely hand,” wrote the poet, “that whatever sins its mistress might be admitting to her confessor, it was evident that of itself it had nothing to do with sin or folly. It was a stainless sweetness alone and apart, and shone in the gloom of the vast cathedral like a sculptured ivory emblem of innocence.”

Nevertheless!—women’s hands that are, or that might be, as delicate and caressable as those of Fra Angelico’s model, or Heine’s unseen lady, are now at work in the strangest kind of “annunciation”!—the most amazing form of “confession”! Why do they toil in such a contrary fashion to their natural bent and inclination? The answer is swift and conclusive. Because Evil is let loose on the earth, and because Good must use all force to overcome it. And, out of sternest necessity, Good must arm itself with weapons that shall not only match but surpass those employed by Evil. In a fight against devils, angels must join battle. In some of the most magnificent scenes of Milton’s “Paradise Lost” when war rages between the warriors of God and the followers of Satan, the good are described as fighting against the bad with terrific weapons of attack, and the outbursts of fire hurled against the devilish foe were none the less potent because wrought by the angelic hosts. Our women workers who prepare the munitions of war are one and all inspired by the same fixed motive and desire—namely, to end the sorrows and suspense of the suffering nations who are involved in the disastrous upheaval which is the result of a people’s pitiful belief in the “divine right,” of a crowned madman. And as they turn out “shells” and yet more “shells,” we know that they hope and believe that for every one completed, at least one of the fiendish murderers of the innocent may be dismissed from a world which his presence has darkened. Perchance they may, as they press on with their work, hear more mystic sounds than are conveyed in the cavity of an empty shell “void of a living will” on the sea-shore—for their filled shell speaks of their own blood, burning with grief and indignation at the slaughter of their kindred—and of the roar and thunder of the guns instead of the crashing billows of the sea. Who shall count the throbbing thoughts of the women who fill these “shells”?—women who look calm enough and resolute enough, and who work on tirelessly and almost wordlessly, as though moved by a single heart, beating through each one’s separate labour! A visitor to a shell factory in the Midlands said to me,—“They work quite mechanically; I think they hardly know what they are about.” Don’t they know what they are about? Indeed they do! They know they are making weapons of destruction that shall bring reprisals for the deaths of brave men—they know that they are helping to save the lives of their own kinsmen, and with all their strength they “speed up,” because they feel that by so doing they are pushing on the end of the war. We shall never be able to realise how much they have done for us, and alas!—the ingratitude of nations to its workers is proverbial. It takes a woman to understand woman’s enforced labour, and to enter with sympathy into all she loses by taking the place of man in hard and difficult times—what sacrifices in health and vitality she makes by long hours of steady application to monotonous factory work—what temptations she has to resist—what bribes—yes!—bribes of cash and comfort she has to forgo. For the enemy is busy elsewhere than on the field—insidious and indefatigable in stirring up strife in this country and sowing the seeds of disloyalty and discontent, and it says much for our women that they are awake and alert to the fact. Of the contemptible few who “make love” to “Fritz” in his prison camp, one can only be sorry that they are so “weak in the upper story!” The real women of the Empire—the women who, in the after-war days that are coming, will have so much of the country’s destiny in their guidance, are in the majority sound, sane, and loyal—we can trust them with work even more momentous than the making of shells! Meanwhile, we can try to be grateful to them for their steadiness and perserverance, their pluck and patience, and let us not forget at any time what we owe to them. It should be graven deep on the records of the nation that—Without Women’s Work the War Could Not Be Won! And in the hour of victory let us not fail to pay them our debt of Honour!

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