They have been up against the real thing,' and know now that all skilled aid available should be not only accepted but welcomed, so as to relieve so far as may be the inevitable sufferings of our soldiers. The shortage of doctors at home has opened many professional posts to women from which, down to 1914, they had been rigorously excluded. The London School of Medicine for Women finds itself under the necessity of increasing its accommodation for students by nearly 50 per cent. In 1900 the average entry was 35, rising later to 60. In the current year 110 new students entered the school.

A similar change is taking place in the industrial world. Down to the present year women, speaking generally, have been excluded from the skilled trades. The trade unionists explain that they do not object to the competition of women because they are women, but because they are so frequently used by employers to provide cheap labour and to undercut men. It should be fully recognised that the trade unionists have done a valuable national service in building up, by years of effort and self-sacrifice, a rate of wages which represents a reasonably good standard of living, and that it would be a national misfortune seriously to lower the rate thus laboriously secured. But the question arises whether they would not have done better by taking the women along with them, by admitting them to their unions and extending the hand of brotherhood to them. According to their own showing, they fear the cupidity of employers who would use the women as a means of lowering the wages of men. But by the very action of the trade unions, in thrusting the women out of the skilled trades and reducing the general level of their wages, the difference between the cost to the employer of men's and women's labour is increased, and thus the temptation to the employer to supplant male by female labour is increased also.*

That in the richest country in the world large numbers of women should be normally in receipt of less than subsistence wages is not only a scandal, it represents a serious

Some unions have already altered their rules since the beginning of the war and have admitted women to membership, e.g. the National Union of Railwaymen and the Railway Clerks Association.

national danger. These women must be ill-nourished and consequently suffering from low vitality. That this is so is proved by the figures regarding sickness among working women furnished by the Insurance Act. The sum required to provide sickness benefit for women is far beyond anything which was allowed for by actuarial calculation. Even apart from the moral problems suggested by such a condition of things, the increased temptations to drink and other lapses, how is the nation to secure a healthy and vigorous childhood if large numbers of mothers are underfed and habitually below par? The waste of infant life now going on is far larger than it ought to be. It is reckoned to amount to at least 80,000 a year; and, if pre-natal deaths are taken into account, this number may probably be doubled. In comparison with these figures, even the tremendous and tragic loss of life in the war (roughly 120,000 up to the end of 1915) is numerically less important.

The experience of women's industrial capacity gained during the war should put new power into the hands of those who for years have been studying, almost with despair, the problem of the sweated woman wage-earner. Women have shown a very high degree of industrial efficiency in the new work in which they have been engaged; they have done well not merely in the mechanical feeding of automatic machines but in work which requires a high degree of technical skill. About the middle of November almost every newspaper broke out into articles in praise of the industrial efficiency of women in munition work. Some of these articles tell a tale which appears almost too good to be true. But the prevalent notion that a woman in a workshop can only perform automatic tasks, requiring neither strength nor skill, should have received its death-blow; except that, as Carlyle said, things often go on living long after their brains have been knocked out. While it is probably desirable to take a considerable pinch of salt with many of the articles referred to (some of them stated, for instance, that one woman can do the work of two men), it is safe to take the evidence of the well-known technical journal The Engineer' as affording proof that, given opportunities of training, women can and do acquire a high standard of skill and efficiency:

'There is a widespread idea that the only machines which women can work are automatic or semi-automatic tools with which it is impossible to make mistakes. This idea is being daily disproved in the factory to which we have referred above, where some most delicate operations necessitating the exercise of great skill and high intelligence are being performed. We need only mention one case, but it will appeal to every mechanical engineer. In a certain screwing operation it was customary, before the employment of women, to rough the thread out with the tool and then to finish it off with taps. Some trouble having arisen owing to the wearing of the taps, the women of their own initiative did away with the second operation and are now accurately chasing the threads to gauge with the tool alone. This is work of which

any mechanic might feel proud. . . . In fact it may be stated with absolute truth that women have shown themselves perfectly capable of performing operations which hitherto have been exclusively carried out by men' ('The Engineer,' Aug. 20, 1915).

There can be little doubt that the experience gained of women's industrial efficiency during the war will have the effect of putting an end to their exclusion from the skilled trades. This in itself will give a great lift to the industrial status of women. The practical problem will be to raise this without lowering the industrial status of men. To use and develop the powers and capabilities of all its citizens, whether men or women, should be the aim of every civilised state. At present women have not only been excluded from what are known as men's trades, they have also been kept out, in a large degree, from what are universally known as women's trades, such as catering, housekeeping and cooking. The disgraceful waste which has characterised the administration of the training camps for soldiers is largely due to the fact that women have not been put to do their own job. If the necessary war economies teach us a truer national economy, for use in peace as well as war, namely, the desirability of giving to every individual a chance of doing the best work which nature and training has fitted him or her for, a new illustration will have been given of the power which has been granted to man to wrest a soul of goodness from things evil.

M. G. FAWCETT.

Vol. 225.-No. 446,

K

Art. 8.-GERMAN METHODS OF PENETRATION IN BELGIUM BEFORE AND DURING THE WAR.

1. The German Mole, a Study of the Art of Peaceful penetration. By Jules Claes. With a Preface by J. Holland Rose. Bell, 1915.

2. (a) Histoire belge du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg.

(b) Histoire belge de la Prusse Rhénane. Deux brochures par Pierre Nothomb. Paris: Perrin, 1915.

3. L'Effort de l'Allemagne pour diviser et teutoniser la Belgique. Par Fernand Passelecq. Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1915.

4. German Socialists and Belgium. By Emile Royer. Preface by Emile Vandervelde. Allen and Unwin, 1915. 5. Pastoral Letter of Cardinal Mercier. Burns and Oates, 1915.

6. Protestation de Monseigneur Heylen, évèque de Namur. La Haye Office belge, 1915. English translation. Burns and Oates, 1915.

7. Reports on the violations of the Rights of Nations and of the Laws and Customs of War. Two vols. Published on behalf of the Belgian Legation. Wyman, 1915, 1916.

THE object-lesson afforded by German efforts in Belgium before and during the war serves, perhaps, as the most potent stimulant to the Allies in their unshakable determination to prosecute the campaign until a definite decision has been obtained, which will safeguard Europe against the ambition of Germany. Nowhere has the process of 'peaceful penetration' been more patiently carried out. Nowhere in a like degree has military success been looked upon as merely a prelude to what is regarded as a natural union with the Empire of territory greedily coveted for many years. Nowhere has the failure of attempts at conquest by pacific methods, by intellectual and moral union, been more clearly demonstrated. Of the long and costly efforts which sought to naturalise German trade, German gold and German labour in Belgium, no trace remains at the present time. All the expectations of the German mind founded on the probable break-up, to its own profit, of the Belgian provinces, have been falsified by the unanimity of an unconquered people. The German

effort has achieved nothing but a simple military occupation. No relationships, economic, intellectual or moral, have followed on the triumph of a power which knows no distinction between right and wrong, and whose very existence depends on arms and the perpetual display of armed force.

We must realise how widely this result differed from the realities and the dreams of German 'penetration' in Belgium before the war, if we wish to measure the extent of its defeat. We must measure the volume of these disappointed ambitions if we are to realise the danger which Belgium is escaping, thanks to the vigour of her national character, if we are to consider the claim which her resistance has justified to a new place in the European system which the victory of the Allies will call into being, a claim which might well be made the subject at the present time of preliminary investigation and discussion. In view of the recent publication of certain works upon the subject we propose to trace the process of preparation which Belgium has undergone at the hands of Germany with a view to a long-contemplated annexation and the events which have brought Europe face to face with the situation as it stands-an ancient people robbed of all means of lawful defence, which, though standing in the vanguard of civilisation, has been overwhelmed by barbarism, but remains true to itself.

A detailed history of the 'penetration' of Belgium by Germany before the war has yet to be written; the appropriation of the port of Antwerp by German traffic was but one step in the process. To denounce the fact, as French writers did periodically, was merely to repeat a commonplace, and tended to range in opposition to France the material interests of Belgian trade. In reality the fact, by itself, gave no especial cause for alarm; and, while French national writers proclaimed 'Antwerp a German port,' France herself, like Italy and England, was the victim of a process of 'penetration' insidious, unceasing, and equally serious.

Owing in both cases to geographical position, the 'hinterland' of Antwerp, like that of Rotterdam, is Germanic; and there was nothing surprising or abnormal