I2I0 Farewell Rally, Women's Land Army. [mar., 



discharge. There were many who tried and persevered and 

 failed, not actually on medical grounds, but owing to lack of 

 physical or nervous staying power. Has it ever been fully 

 reahsed b}^ those who took young girls from town surroundings, 

 what a severe test to their nervous powers the new work and 

 the stiange surroundings constituted ? Many of them were 

 young enough in all conscience ! Poor little failures of the 

 Land Army ; they were so inevitable ! But it must be re- 

 membered that the greater number of the women came forward 

 v/ith good intentions but utterly without means of gauging 

 their own powers of skill or endurance beforehand. But the 

 country owes its debt of gratitude to all those who answered 

 the call to National Service only to fail, and the Organisers 

 recognising this, and having no funds or officers to meet the 

 purpose, yet did what was possible to place these girls on a safe 

 footing after their return, and will doubtless always be glad to 

 remember that they did so. 



The percentage of women released solely on medical grounds 

 from April, 1917, to June, 1918, was found to be approximately 

 6 per cent. — an astonishingly small number considering the 

 elements of uncertainty which had to be weighed in the 

 balances against success. For what after all was the history 

 of the beginning of the Land Army ? 



When the subsidising of the scheme was finally decided upon, 

 the Organisers had absolutely nothing to draw upon either in 

 the way of precedent or material. Now that the scheme has 

 won its way and fulfilled its object, and now that women are 

 about to take advantage of all that has been won for them, 

 the stupendous task which the Organisers had before them 

 should be remembered. The Director and those in council 

 with her must have pondered long upon the distressing problem 

 of how to make something grow out of nothing ! There was 

 no foundation for a staff, and it was a scheme which needed a 

 specially gifted staff. There were no land girls on the scale 

 required, and it seemed extremely doubtful whether women 

 could or would leave their own homes and consent to be mobile, 

 or, beyond the fact that women in certain parts of the country 

 had worked at seasonal times and in a purely local way, that 

 they would consent to do the rough work of the general farm 

 labourer. The very fact that even this form of land work had 

 been considered derogatory would seem to be against recruiting 

 on any large scale. The workers must be drawn from the towns 

 as well as from the country if a sufficient number were to be 



