Summary: British fictionalised propaganda drama on the need for women to accept separation from, and loss of, their husbands, 1918 (?).
Description: (Reel 1) A working class back street slum, with the men at war and the women largely unable to cope with growing children. Lizzie has a small baby that her husband Jim, a corporal serving in France, has never seen. From time to time the newsboy or a telegram will tell a neighbour her husband is dead. Lizzie is in despair. A neighbour calls and Lizzie reads her husband's last letter telling of German brutality and how he would willingly die to punish them. The vicar calls with clothes for Lizzie to mend for a living, telling her Jim is doing his duty. She replies that "he might have dodged it. Plenty have!..It isn't fair to us women". After the vicar leaves a letter arrives that Jim is missing presumed dead. Lizzie swoons and the neighbour, unable to console her, leaves. Lizzie falls asleep. (Reel 2) Lizzie dreams that her husband has returned, but is furtive and aggressive. He tells her he has deserted, outlining how he stole a blank leave pass and returned to England under a false name, leaving his comrades. She is horrified, "I'd sooner you were dead than a deserter". He tells her he's going north to look for work under an assumed name and she can join him later. Meanwhile as she dreams her husband has genuinely returned and wakes her. He explains that he has been given leave. "Me desert? Not likely! We're out to finish this job." He tells her that the telegram announcing his death is probably to mislead the Germans as to British casualties, "a trick to make the Germans overconfident - thinking I'm done for". They embrace and he cuddles the baby as the film irises out and ends.
