by Gavin Fuller
Your obedient servant,
Templar
7 November 1918
THE ENEMY’S DESTRUCTION
SIR – Thousands of women will endorse unreservedly the excellent letter of ‘Templar’ in today’s Daily Telegraph, urging that parties of women should go to France in order to learn by actual fact the terrible meaning of war. But while any little group of men are granted all facilities to see what our armies have accomplished and the deliverance that has been wrought, such privileges have been constantly and persistently withheld from women. May I remind you, sir, that in August last Sir Harry Brittain suggested in your own columns that a representative party of women munition workers and aircraft workers should be sent out, that they might see for themselves what their handicraft had achieved in the liberation of Belgium and northern France. The suggestion enjoyed your own powerful support, and Sir Robert Hadfield generously offered a hundred guineas if desirable towards the expenses. I understand that the scheme was viewed with approval in high official quarters, but it was passed on to the War Aims Committee, who have done nothing in the matter, and who should be compelled by public opinion to make some movement.
The General Election is close upon us, the women’s vote will be of vast importance, and nothing would have greater influence towards a sternly just settlement when peace can be discussed than a realisation of the unspeakable crimes and wanton destruction wrought by the German invaders. There is a strong feeling among working women that their reasonable claims to recognition are being overlooked, and that as taxpayers and voters they have the right to see something of what their labours have contributed to the naval and military triumphs that have been won. ‘The prospect now before us has been made possible by the women of the country,’ said Mrs Lloyd George at the City Temple, on Monday evening. There is no reason whatever why parties of women selected by the votes of their sister workers in the factories should not start next week. Accommodation can be arranged for them in the camps of Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps, and the minor details would not need an hour’s arrangement.
I am, Sir, yours obediently,
Working Woman
London
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First published in 2014
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