1920.] Farewell Rally, Women's Land Army. 1209 



stoutl}/ declared to be far too hard for women — were fully 

 employed, and there was no more popular work amongst the 

 girls. The tractor drivers went ahead and took the held with 

 honours, and interest grew stronger. There was amongst the 

 women who received the Bar that night, one who had ploughed 

 land which no man cared to touch, and yet she possessed, 

 apparently, no undue measure of physical strength. Employers 

 began to be convinced of a fact which the pioneers amongst 

 them had contested all along, that although a woman could 

 not take the place of a man in point of view of physical strength 

 and a general day's work, she could in certain circumstances 

 achieve by her quickness of perception and deftness of handling 

 and by the very enthusiasm of youth, what he could or would 

 not, and it was just there that the women began to rouse the 

 honest recognition of the more backward employers. They 

 saw that although her sphere of work on his farm might be 

 limited, it was none the less valuable within its own scope. 

 There is no more appreciative man than the British farmer if 

 he feels that he is getting his money's worth and is not being 

 imposed upon. 



In one county where opposition to female labour had been 

 very strong, a farmer used to watch the work of the tractor 

 driver for hours and then go home very much more disposed 

 to be patient with his own little struggHng farm hand, and less 

 incHned to dub the whole Land Army a " wash-out " because 

 there had been a considerable number of failiu-es. The progress 

 of the Land Army had reached a stage where only a few signal 

 successes were needed to turn the tide in its favour. In- 

 credulity died a natural death, and those amongst the employers 

 who had been the pioneers of the scheme began to breathe 

 freely. 



Failures ! A whole chapter might be written on the subject 

 of failures both from their own and from their employer's point 

 of view. For the Organisers of the Land Army would be the 

 first to recognise that the waste material must have been a 

 sore trial to an overworked farmer during those first trying 

 months. There were those girls who began badly, did not 

 know how to use their new freedom or responsibility, and then 

 tried again and became excellent workers. But there were 

 others who could not regain the ground they had lost, or who 

 had never had the backbone to stand a new test of any kind, 

 and these, after unconsciously pulling down the prestige in their 

 neighbourhood, themselves knew the bitterness of ignomious 



