1920.] Farewell Rally, Women's Land Army. 1205 



THE FAREWELL RALLY 

 OF THE WOMEN'S LAND ARMY, 

 AND A RETROSPECT. 



X. Frida Hartley. 



The 27th November last marked the return to more normal 

 labour conditions in agriculture by a Final Rally of the Women's 

 Land Army. It was held in the Drapers' Hall, London, where 

 Princess Marv presented Distinguished Service Bars to 57 

 women, all of whom had won their honours for deeds of bravery 

 or special skill or devotion in their duties. 



Those who were present received a very forcible impression 

 of the high standard of physical strength in the women and 

 of their general appearance of freshness after their hard 

 service. These massed groups of girls from the counties 

 represented a page in the history of agriculture and an epoch 

 in their own working lives. If it is contended that they were 

 a picked lot and stood for the flower of the Land Army, it 

 must also be remembered that, coming in the first place from 

 all classes of industrial life, many of them had been made or 

 had made themselves what they are to-day. 



The two and a half years of the life of the Land Army, 

 may be said to border on romance. The scheme appeared as 

 one item in the National Service programme of 191 7, without 

 precedent and without any assurance of success. It was built 

 up in doubt, launched in a sea of opposition, and had perforce 

 to sink or swim on its own entirely untried merits. Its romantic 

 element comes in a peculiar triumph of its own, which it has 

 gained by its own struggle against obstacles and because it has 

 in the end achieved so much more than its own original in- 

 tentions of providing a stop-gap for labour shortage. 



It is fully recognised by now that during its Hfetime two 

 time- worn notions, both strangely contradictory one to another, 

 have decayed and crumbled into ruins ; one, that this land work 

 which the women have found to be so worthy a thing, was 

 beneath female dignity, and the other that agriculture, in 

 which they have found so good a place, covers at the same 

 time too robust a field of knowledge and makes too large a 

 demand on physical strength to find a place for their finer 

 perceptions and powers of mere personal devotion. The 

 breaking down of the barriers and the discovery that, after 

 all, this fineness of perception and power of devotion were, 



