This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on Jan. 10, 1942.
Never have we had such a year of surprises and shocks, and yet never since the war began have we had such high hopes of ultimate victory.
The greatest surprise has been Russia. Some heads are still dizzy after their right-about-face. We were sure after the Hitler-Stalin pact, just before the war, that there was no difference between the two dictators, but on June 22, 1941, we got our answer to that. Every day since then we have received additional proof that our judgment was faulty. We misjudged the Russians.
When we look back, we can see that Russia was one jump ahead of us in intelligent evaluation of the Hitler menace. At the time of Munich, one of the Russian delegates at the League of Nations, in dark despair over what had happened, told us that Russia would have to fight Germany sooner rather than later.
This was said by Alexandra Kalontay, then and now, Russian minister in Stockholm. She was not deceived by any “peace in our time” talk; neither was the present Russian ambassador at Washington, who could not be invited to the Munich conference because Hitler refused to sit down with a Jew. In order that Hitler be not offended, Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Daladier cold-shouldered the Russian foreign minister.
Time has a way of setting things right, and so we can see we are learning, howbeit by the hard way.
As women we learned something, too, in 1941, about our place in wartime, and that has been another slow process. As early as April 1939, there was a registration of all women all across Canada. Women asked to be allowed to register for war work and consent was given by the Dominion government.
The registration revealed great variety in women’s experience and training. On Vancouver Island alone we found women who had made munitions, been court reporters and interpreters, private secretaries to cabinet ministers, laboratory technicians, hospital matrons, physicians, factory foremen and many other highly specialized workers. Although nothing came of this registration, women’s groups all over Canada began to meet, drill, study, and again and again asked to be allowed to serve.
But there seemed to be a number of reasons for delay. Someone was always making a survey of something, or somebody had gone to England and would not be back for six weeks. Never once were the women bluntly refused, but they were put off. Is it any wonder their ardour cooled?
But this is our country, and we have to serve it in the best possible way, and we know we can’t save it by knitting socks and sweaters or making sewing kits, important as these are in the matter of morale and comfort. But we can see now that even morale and comfort will not save the country.
Human flesh cannot meet steel and overcome it. Hitler did say something once about “breaking barbed wire with human breasts.” That might be all right for Hitler, for he doesn’t care about his soldiers — he deserts, betrays and sacrifices them without a quiver.
We know now we must have tanks and planes and guns. We know, too, that the time is short and the days are evil; we are ready to give up leisure, comfort and everything to supply these for our fighting men. Strong young women, keen-witted and capable, are ready to do what they can and go where they’re told without a murmur. They are not afraid of toil, sweat and tears.
We rejoice, too, that there are things that even the women who are no longer young can do. I read in a British bulletin that the salvage recovered by municipal authorities in Britain has saved the equivalent of 250 voyages across the Atlantic, and is valued at $14,800,000.
On Dec. 7, in the early morning, the scene changed with tragic suddenness, and there has been a quickening of the pace ever since. Our losses have been so great that we must not think about them. Able-bodied women no longer believe they are doing their full duty by hunting up old woollens to be made into blankets, or cutting stamps off letters. We know that the great need of the moment is for munitions, and we know that the women of Canada can do what the women of Britain have been doing.
Edna Jaques, Western Canada’s beloved poet, saw this need three months ago. She found she could no longer sit in comfort writing, although her poems have comforted many and have a definite patriotic value, not only here but in the United States and Britain as well.
When Coventry was bombed, she wrote a message to the brave survivors, and not knowing whether any of the newspapers had come through the destruction, sent it to the postmaster. He was so touched by her words that he wrote a reply in the same metre, and the two poems appeared in the Coventry newspapers.
But now Jaques is not writing poems. She is making munitions, and works on the night shift. When 7 o’clock comes in the morning, she is tired but happy, too, for she knows she is part of Canada’s defence. In her poems written since the war began, her touch has been steady and sure, and her new volume, called Aunt Hattie’s Place, is full of the glory and heartbreak of this time. Her Death of a Young Aviator is one of the truly great poems of this war.
I wonder if Hitler and his associates have learned anything in 1941? Evidently, they haven’t yet learned that the doctrine and practice of frightfulness — “Schrecklichkeit” — which was the slogan of Atilla the Hun 15 centuries ago, does not work. Now it has united people against him everywhere, and set him and his followers outside the pale of human mercy. Hitler must be destroyed, we declare, there is no other way. Even the confirmed pacifists agree on this.
Now we have another problem that calls for clear thinking. We have in this province of British Columbia 23,000 Japanese people, many of them natives of Canada and some of the second generation. We have an opportunity now of showing them that we do respect human rights and that democracy has a wide enough framework to give peace and security to all people of good will irrespective of race or colour.
I believe that all precautions must be taken at this time, but we must not sink into Hitler’s way of punishing innocent people, just because we do not like their country. The Canadian Japanese are not to blame for the treacherous attack on Pearl Harbor, or the other misdeeds of their countrymen.
One over-zealous resident of Vancouver was outraged to see a policeman convoying Japanese children across a crowded street, when “there are street corners where no policeman is in attendance.” Another one of the same mentality stamped off a street car because Japanese passengers were on it.
Two 12-year-old boys set fire to a Japanese home in Seattle, endangering the lives of five American-born children, and the report said: “The boys were no doubt actuated by patriotism.” These things do not belong to our way of life. There is a touch of the Nazi in them that we cannot tolerate.
Here is a brighter item of news that fits into our framework:
“Under the Red Cross, there was sent out from the Pacific coast recently 5,680 cans of salmon caught by Japanese fishermen and canned by the Chinese for shipment to bombed Britain.”
A great opportunity is ours today to show a kindly spirit of watchful tolerance.
Let us guard well, not only our bridges and our plants, but our good name for fair dealing. We must have precautions, but not persecutions.
Some of McClung’s columns from the 1930s and 1940s have been collected in a book, The Valiant Nellie McClung: Selected Writings by Canada’s Most Famous Suffragist, by Barbara Smith.
