CHAPTER III

The sentence of nine months astonished us beyond measure, especially in

view of certain very recent events, one of these being the case of some

sailors who had mutinied in order to call attention to something which

they considered a peril to themselves and to all seafarers. They were

tried and found technically guilty, but because of the motive behind

their mutiny, were discharged without punishment. Perhaps more nearly

like our case than this was the case of the labour leader, Tom Mann,

who, shortly before, had written a pamphlet calling upon His Majesty's

soldiers not to fire upon strikers when commanded to do so by their

superior officers. From the Government's point of view this was a much

more serious kind of inciting than ours, because if it had been

responded to the authorities would have been absolutely crippled in

maintaining order. Besides, soldiers who refuse to obey orders are

liable to the death penalty. Tom Mann was given a sentence of six

months, but this was received, on the part of the Liberal Press and

Liberal politicians, with so much clamour and protest that the prisoner

was released at the end of two months. So, even on our way to prison, we

told one another that our sentences could not stand. Public opinion

would never permit the Government to keep us in prison for nine months,

or in the second division for any part of our term. We agreed to wait

seven Parliamentary days before we began a hunger strike protest.

It was very dreary waiting, those seven Parliamentary days, because we

could not know what was happening outside, or what was being talked of

in the House. We could know nothing of the protests and memorials that

were pouring in, on our behalf, from Oxford and Cambridge Universities,

from members of learned societies, and from distinguished men and women

of all professions, not only in England but in every country of Europe,

from the United States and Canada, and even from India. An international

memorial asking that we be treated as political prisoners was signed by

such great men and women as Prof. Paul Milyoukoff, leader of the

Constitutional Democrats in the Duma; Signor Enrico Ferri, of the

Italian Chamber of Deputies; Edward Bernstein, of the German Reichstag;

George Brandes, Edward Westermarck, Madame Curie, Ellen Key, Maurice

Maeterlinck, and many others. The greatest indignation was expressed in

the House, Keir Hardie and Mr. George Lansbury leading in the demand for

a drastic revision of our sentences and our immediate transference to

the first division. So much pressure was brought to bear that within a

few days the Home Secretary announced that he felt it his duty to

examine into the circumstances of the case without delay. He explained

that the prisoners had not at any time been forced to wear prison

clothes. Ultimately, which in this case means shortly before the

expiration of the seven Parliamentary days, we were all three placed in

the first division. Mrs. Pethick Lawrence was given the cell formerly

occupied by Dr. Jameson and I had the cell adjoining. Mr. Pethick

Lawrence, in Brixton Gaol, was similarly accommodated. We all had the

privilege of furnishing our cells with comfortable chairs, tables, our

own bedding, towels, and so on. We had meals sent in from the outside;

we wore our own clothing and had what books, newspapers and writing

materials we required. We were not permitted to write or receive letters

or to see our friends except in the ordinary two weeks' routine. Still

we had gained our point that suffrage prisoners were politicals.

We had gained it, but, as it turned out, only for ourselves. When we

made the inquiry, "Are all our women now transferred to the first

division?" the answer was that the order for transference referred only

to Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence and myself. Needless to say, we

immediately refused to accept this unfair advantage, and after we had

exhausted every means in our power to induce the Home Secretary to give

the other suffrage prisoners the same justice that we had received, we

adopted the protest of the hunger strike. The word flew swiftly through

Holloway, and in some mysterious way travelled to Brixton, to Aylesbury,

and Winson Green, and at once all the other suffrage prisoners followed

our lead. The Government then had over eighty hunger strikers on their

hands, and, as before, had ready only the argument of force, which means

that disgusting and cruel process of forcible feeding. Holloway became a

place of horror and torment. Sickening scenes of violence took place

almost every hour of the day, as the doctors went from cell to cell

performing their hideous office. One of the men did his work in such

brutal fashion that the very sight of him provoked cries of horror and

anguish. I shall never while I live forget the suffering I experienced

during the days when those cries were ringing in my ears. In her frenzy

of pain one woman threw herself from the gallery on which her cell

opened. A wire netting eight feet below broke her fall to the iron

staircase beneath, else she must inevitably have been killed. As it was

she was frightfully hurt.

The wholesale hunger strike created a tremendous stir throughout

England, and every day in the House the Ministers were harassed with

questions. The climax was reached on the third or fourth day of the

strike, when a stormy scene took place in the House of Commons. The

Under Home Secretary, Mr. Ellis Griffith, had been mercilessly

questioned as to conditions under which the forcible feeding was being

done, and as soon as this was over one of the suffragist members made a

moving appeal to the Prime Minister himself to order the release of all

the prisoners. Mr. Asquith, forced against his will to take part in the

controversy, rose and said that it was not for him to interfere with the

actions of his colleague, Mr. McKenna, and he added, in his own suave,

mendacious manner: "I must point out this, that there is not one single

prisoner who cannot go out of prison this afternoon on giving the

undertaking asked for by the Home Secretary." Meaning an undertaking to

refrain henceforth from militancy.

Instantly Mr. George Lansbury sprang to his feet and exclaimed: "You

know they cannot! It is perfectly disgraceful that the Prime Minister of

England should make such a statement."

Mr. Asquith glanced carelessly at the indignant Lansbury, but sank into

his seat without deigning to reply. Shocked to the depths of his soul by

the insult thrown at our women, Mr. Lansbury strode up to the

Ministerial bench and confronted the Prime Minister, saying again: "That

was a disgraceful thing for you to say, Sir. You are beneath contempt,

you and your colleagues. You call yourselves gentlemen, and you forcibly

feed and murder women in this fashion. You ought to be driven out of

office. Talk about protesting. It is the most disgraceful thing that

ever happened in the history of England. You will go down to history as

the men who tortured innocent women."

By this time the House was seething, and the indignant Labour member had

to shout at the top of his big voice in order to be heard over the din.

Mr. Asquith's pompous order that Mr. Lansbury leave the House for the

day was probably known to very few until it appeared in print next day.

At all events Mr. Lansbury continued his protest for five minutes

longer. "You murder, torture and drive women mad," he cried, "and then

you tell them they can walk out. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

You talk about principle--you talk about fighting in Ulster--you, too--"

turning to the Unionist benches--"You ought to be driven out of public

life. These women are showing you what principle is. You ought to

honour them for standing up for their womanhood. I tell you, Commons of

England, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves."

The Speaker came to Mr. Asquith's rescue at last and adjured Mr.

Lansbury that he must obey the Prime Minister's order to leave the

House, saying that such disorderly conduct would cause the House to lose

respect. "Sir," exclaimed Mr. Lansbury, in a final burst of righteous

rage, "it has lost it already."

This unprecedented explosion of wrath and scorn against the Government

was the sensation of the hour, and it was felt on all sides that the

release of the prisoners, or at least cessation of forcible feeding,

which amounted to the same thing, would be ordered. Every day the

Suffragettes marched in great crowds to Holloway, serenading the

prisoners and holding protest meetings to immense crowds. The music and

the cheering, faintly wafted to our straining ears, was inexpressibly

sweet. Yet it was while listening to one of these serenades that the

most dreadful moment of my imprisonment occurred. I was lying in bed,

very weak from starvation, when I heard a sudden scream from Mrs.

Lawrence's cell, then the sound of a prolonged and very violent

struggle, and I knew that they had dared to carry their brutal business

to our doors. I sprang out of bed and, shaking with weakness and with

anger, I set my back against the wall and waited for what might come. In

a few moments they had finished with Mrs. Lawrence and had flung open

the door of my cell. On the threshold I saw the doctors, and back of

them a large group of wardresses. "Mrs. Pankhurst," began the doctor.

Instantly I caught up a heavy earthenware water jug from a table hard

by, and with hands that now felt no weakness I swung the jug head high.

"If any of you dares so much as to take one step inside this cell I

shall defend myself," I cried. Nobody moved or spoke for a few seconds,

and then the doctor confusedly muttered something about to-morrow

morning doing as well, and they all retreated.

I demanded to be admitted to Mrs. Lawrence's cell, where I found my

companion in a desperate state. She is a strong woman, and a very

determined one, and it had required the united strength of nine

wardresses to overcome her. They had rushed into the cell without any

warning, and had seized her unawares, else they might not have succeeded

at all. As it was she resisted so violently that the doctors could not

apply the stethoscope, and they had very great difficulty in getting the

tube down. After the wretched affair was over Mrs. Lawrence fainted, and

for hours afterwards was very ill.

This was the last attempt made to forcibly feed either Mrs. Lawrence or

myself, and two days later we were ordered released on medical grounds.

The other hunger strikers were released in batches, as every day a few

more triumphant rebels approached the point where the Government stood

in danger of committing actual murder. Mr. Lawrence, who was forcibly

fed twice a day for more than ten days, was released in a state of

complete collapse on July 1st. Within a few days after that the last of

the prisoners were at liberty.

As soon as I was sufficiently recovered I went to Paris and had the joy

of seeing again my daughter Christabel, who, during all the days of

strife and misery, had kept her personal anxiety in the background and

had kept staunchly at her work of leadership. The absence of Mr. and

Mrs. Pethick Lawrence had thrown the entire responsibility of the

editorship of our paper, _Votes for Women_, on her shoulders, but as she

has invariably risen to meet new responsibility, she conducted the paper

with skill and discretion.

We had much to talk about and to consider, because it was evident that

militancy, instead of being dropped, as the other suffrage societies

were constantly suggesting, must go on very much more vigorously than

before. The struggle had been too long drawn out. We had to seek ways to

shorten it, to bring it to such a climax that the Government would

acknowledge that something had to be done. We had already demonstrated

that our forces were impregnable. We could not be conquered, we could

not be terrified, we could not even be kept in prison. Therefore, since

the Government had their war lost in advance, our task was merely to

hasten the surrender.

The situation in Parliament, as far as the suffrage question was

concerned, was clean swept and barren. The third Conciliation Bill had

failed to pass its second reading, the majority against it being

fourteen.

Many Liberal members were afraid to vote for the bill because Mr.

Lloyd-George and Mr. Lewis Harcourt had persistently spread the rumour

that its passage, at that time, would result in splitting the Cabinet.

The Irish Nationalist members had become hostile to the bill because

their leader, Mr. Redmond, was an anti-suffragist, and had refused to

include a woman suffrage clause in the Home Rule Bill. Our erstwhile

friends, the Labour members, were so apathetic, or so fearful for

certain of their own measures, that most of them stayed away from the

House on the day the bill reached its second reading. So it was lost,

and the Militants were blamed for its loss! In June the Government

announced that Mr. Asquith's manhood suffrage bill would soon be

introduced, and very soon after this the bill did appear. It simplified

the registration machinery, reduced the qualifying period of residence

to six months, and abolished property qualifications, plural voting and

University representation. In a word, it gave the Parliamentary

franchise to every man above the age of twenty-one and it denied it to

all women. Never in the history of the suffrage movement had such an

affront been offered to women, and never in the history of England had

such a blow been aimed at women's liberties. It is true that the Prime

Minister had pledged himself to introduce a bill capable of being

amended to include women's suffrage, and to permit any amendment that

passed its second reading to become a part of the bill. But we had no

faith in an amendment, nor in any bill that was not from its inception

an official Government measure. Mr. Asquith had broken every pledge he

had ever made the women, and this new pledge impressed us not at all.

Well we knew that he had given it only to cover his treachery in

torpedoing the Conciliation Bill, and in the hope of placating the

suffragists, perhaps securing another truce to militancy.

If this last was his hope he was most grievously disappointed. Signs

were constantly appearing to indicate that women would no longer be

contented with the symbolic militancy involved in window breaking. For

example, traces were found in the Home Secretary's office at Whitehall

of an attempt at arson. On the doorstep of another Cabinet Minister

similar traces were found. Had the Government acted upon these warnings,

by giving women the vote, all the serious acts of militancy that have

occurred since would have been averted. But like the heart of Pharaoh,

the heart of the Government hardened, and militant acts followed one

another in rapid succession. In July the W. S. P. U. issued a manifesto

which set forth our intentions in that regard. The manifesto read in

part as follows:

"The leaders of the Women's Social and Political Union have so often

warned the Government that unless the vote were granted to women in

response to the mild militancy of the past, a fiercer spirit of revolt

would be awakened which it would be impossible to control. The

Government have blindly disregarded the warning, and now they are

reaping the harvest of their unstatesmanlike folly."

This was issued immediately after a visit paid by Mr. Asquith to Dublin.

The occasion had been intended to be one of great pomp and circumstance,

a huge popular demonstration in honour of the sponsor of Home Rule, but

the Suffragettes turned it into the most lamentable fiasco imaginable.

From the hour of Mr. Asquith's attempted secret departure from London

until his return he lived and moved in momentary dread of Suffragettes.

Every time he entered or left a railway carriage or a steamer he was

confronted by women. Every time he rose to speak he was interrupted by

women. Every public appearance he made was turned into a riot by women.

As he left Dublin a woman threw a hatchet into his motor car, without,

however, doing him any injury. As a final protest against his reception

by Irishmen, the Theatre Royal was set on fire by two women. The theatre

was practically empty at the time, the performance having been

completed, and the damage done was comparatively small, yet the two

women chiefly concerned, Mrs. Leigh and Miss Evans, were given the

barbarous sentences of five years each in prison. These were the first

women sentenced to penal servitude in the history of our movement. Of

course they did not serve their sentences. On entering Mountjoy Prison

they put in the usual claim for first division treatment, and this being

refused, they immediately adopted the hunger strike. A number of Irish

Suffragettes were in Mountjoy at this time for a protest made against

the exclusion of women from the Home Rule Bill. They were in the first

division, and they were almost on the eve of their release, but such is

the indomitable spirit of militancy that these women entered upon a

sympathetic hunger strike. They were released, but the Government

forbade the release of Mrs. Leigh and Miss Evans, that is, they ordered

the authorities to retain the women as long as they could, by forcible

feeding, be kept alive. After a struggle which, for fierceness and

cruelty, is almost unparalleled in our annals, the two women fought

their way out.

All during that summer militancy surged up and down throughout the

Kingdom. A series of attacks on golf links was instituted, not at all in

a spirit of wanton mischief, but with the direct and very practical

object of reminding the dull and self-satisfied English public that when

the liberties of English women were being stolen from them was no time

to think of sports. The women selected country clubs where prominent

Liberal politicians were wont to take their week-end pleasures, and with

acids they burned great patches of turf, rendering the golf greens

useless for the time being. They burned the words, Votes for Women, in

some cases, and always they left behind them reminders that women were

warring for their freedom. On one occasion when the Court was at

Balmoral Castle in Scotland, the Suffragettes invaded the Royal golf

links, and when Sunday morning dawned all the marking flags were found

to have been replaced by W. S. P. U. flags hearing inscriptions such as

"Votes for Women means peace for Ministers," "Forcible feeding must be

stopped," and the like. The golf links were frequently visited by

Suffragettes in order to question recreant ministers. Two women followed

the Prime Minister to Inverness, where he was playing golf with Mr.

McKenna. Approaching the men one Suffragette exclaimed: "Mr. Asquith,

you must stop forcible feeding--" She got no farther, for Mr. Asquith,

turning pale with rage--perhaps--retreated behind the Home Secretary,

who, quite forgetting his manners, seized the Suffragette, crying out

that he was going to throw her into the pond. "Then we will take you

with us," the two retorted, after which a very lively scuffle ensued,

and the women were not thrown into the pond.

[Illustration: A SUFFRAGETTE THROWING A BAG OF FLOUR AT MR. ASQUITH IN

CHESTER]

This golf green activity really aroused more hostility against us than

all the window-breaking. The papers published appeals to us not to

interfere with a game that helped weary politicians to think clearly,

but our reply to this was that it had not had any such effect on the

Prime Minister or Mr. Lloyd-George. We had undertaken to spoil their

sport and that of a large class of comfortable men in order that they

should be obliged to think clearly about women, and women's firm

determination to get justice.

I made my return to active work in the autumn by speaking at a great

meeting of the W. S. P. U., held in the Albert Hall. At that meeting I

had the announcement to make that the six years' association of Mr. and

Mrs. Pethick Lawrence with the W. S. P. U. had ended.

Since personal dissensions have never been dwelt upon in the

W. S. P. U., have never been allowed to halt the movement or to

interfere for an hour with its progress, I shall not here say any more

about this important dissension than I said at our first large meeting

in Albert Hall after the holiday, on October 17th. That day a new paper

was sold on the streets. It was called _The Suffragette_, it was edited

by Christabel Pankhurst, and was henceforth to be the official organ of

the Union. Both in this new paper and in _Votes for Women_, the

following announcement appeared:

GRAVE STATEMENT BY THE LEADERS

At the first reunion of the leaders after the enforced holiday,

Mrs. Pankhurst and Miss Christabel Pankhurst outlined a new

militant policy which Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence found

themselves altogether unable to approve.

Mrs. Pankhurst and Miss Christabel Pankhurst indicated that they

were not prepared to modify their intentions, and recommended that

Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence should resume control of the Paper,

_Votes for Women_, and should leave the Women's Social and

Political Union.

Rather than make schism in the ranks of the Union Mr. and Mrs.

Pethick Lawrence consented to take this course.

This was signed by all four. That night at the meeting I further

explained to the members that, hard as partings from old friends and

comrades unquestionably were, we must remember that we were fighting in

an army, and that unity of purpose and unity of policy are absolutely

necessary, because without them the army is hopelessly weakened. "It is

better," I said, "that those who cannot agree, cannot see eye to eye as

to policy, should set themselves free, should part, and should be free

to continue their policy as they see it in their own way, unfettered by

those with whom they can no longer agree."

Continuing I said: "I give place to none in appreciation and gratitude

to Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence for the incalculable services that they

have rendered the militant movement for Woman Suffrage, and I firmly

believe that the women's movement will be strengthened by their being

free to work for woman suffrage in the future as they think best, while

we of the Women's Social and Political Union shall continue the militant

agitation for Woman Suffrage initiated by my daughter and myself and a

handful of women more than six years ago."

I then went on to survey the situation in which the W. S. P. U. now

stood and to outline the new militant policy which he had decided upon.

This policy, to begin with, was relentless opposition, not only to the

party in power, the Liberal Party, but to all parties in the coalition.

I reminded the women that the Government that had tricked and betrayed

us and was now plotting to make our progress towards citizenship doubly

difficult, was kept in office through the coalition of three parties.

There was the Liberal Party, nominally the governing party, but they

could not live another day without the coalition of the Nationalist and

the Labour parties. So we should say, not only to the Liberal Party but

to the Nationalist Party and the Labour Party, "So long as you keep in

office an anti-suffrage Government, you are parties to their guilt, and

from henceforth we offer you the same opposition which we give to the

people whom you are keeping in power with your support." I said further:

"We have summoned the Labour Party to do their duty by their own

programme, and to go into opposition to the Government on every question

until the Government do justice to women. They apparently are not

willing to do that. Some of them tell us that other things are more

important than the liberty of women--than the liberty of working women.

We say, 'Then, gentlemen, we must teach you the value of your own

principles, and until you are prepared to stand for the right of women

to decide their lives and the laws under which they shall live, you,

with Mr. Asquith and company, are equally responsible for all that has

happened and is happening to women in this struggle for emancipation.'"

Outlining further our new and stronger policy of aggression, I said:

"There is a great deal of criticism, ladies and gentlemen, of this

movement. It always seems to me when the anti-suffrage members of the

Government criticise militancy in women that it is very like beasts of

prey reproaching the gentler animals who turn in desperate resistance

when at the point of death. Criticism from gentlemen who do not hesitate

to order out armies to kill and slay their opponents, who do not

hesitate to encourage party mobs to attack defenceless women in public

meetings--criticism from them hardly rings true. Then I get letters from

people who tell me that they are ardent suffragists but who say that

they do not like the recent developments in the militant movement, and

implore me to urge the members not to be reckless with human life.

Ladies and gentlemen, the only recklessness the militant suffragists

have shown about human life has been about their own lives and not about

the lives of others, and I say here and now that it has never been and

never will be the policy of the Women's Social and Political Union

recklessly to endanger human life. We leave that to the enemy. We leave

that to the men in their warfare. It is not the method of women. No,

even from the point of view of public policy, militancy affecting the

security of human life would be out of place. _There is something that

governments care far more for than human life, and that is the security

of property, and so it is through property that we shall strike the

enemy._ From henceforward the women who agree with me will say, 'We

disregard your laws, gentlemen, we set the liberty and the dignity and

the welfare of women above all such considerations, and we shall

continue this war, as we have done in the past; and what sacrifice of

property, or what injury to property accrues will not be our fault. It

will be the fault of that Government who admit the justice of our

demands, but refuses to concede them without the evidence, so they have

told us, afforded to governments of the past, that those who asked for

liberty were in earnest in their demands!"

I called upon the women of the meeting to join me in this new militancy,

and I reminded them anew that the women who were fighting in the

Suffragette army had a great mission, the greatest mission the world has

ever known--the freeing of one-half the human race, and through that

freedom the saving of the other half. I said to them: "Be militant each

in your own way. Those of you who can express your militancy by going to

the House of Commons and refusing to leave without satisfaction, as we

did in the early days--do so. Those of you who can express militancy by

facing party mobs at Cabinet Ministers' meetings, when you remind them

of their falseness to principle--do so. Those of you who can express

your militancy by joining us in our anti-Government by-election

policy--do so. Those of you who can break windows--break them. Those of

you who can still further attack the secret idol of property, so as to

make the Government realise that property is as greatly endangered by

women's suffrage as it was by the Chartists of old--do so. And my last

word is to the Government: I incite this meeting to rebellion. I say to

the Government: You have not dared to take the leaders of Ulster for

their incitement to rebellion. Take me if you dare, but if you dare I

tell you this, that so long as those who incited to armed rebellion and

the destruction of human life in Ulster are at liberty, you will not

keep me in prison. So long as men rebels--and voters--are at liberty,

we will not remain in prison, first division or no first division."

I ask my readers, some of whom no doubt will be shocked and displeased

at these words of mine that I have so frankly set down, to put

themselves in the place of those women who for years had given their

lives entirely and unstintingly to the work of securing political

freedom for women; who had converted so great a proportion of the

electorate that, had the House of Commons been a free body, we should

have won that freedom years before; who had seen their freedom withheld

from them through treachery and misuse of power. I ask you to consider

that we had used, in our agitation, only peaceful means until we saw

clearly that peaceful means were absolutely of no avail, and then for

years we had used only the mildest militancy, until we were taunted by

Cabinet Ministers, and told that we should never get the vote until we

employed the same violence that men had used in their agitation for

suffrage. After that we had used stronger militancy, but even that, by

comparison with the militancy of men in labour disputes, could not

possibly be counted as violent. Through all these stages of our

agitation we had been punished with the greatest severity, sent to

prison like common criminals, and of late years tortured as no criminals

have been tortured for a century in civilised countries of the world.

And during all these years we had seen disastrous strikes that had

caused suffering and death, to say nothing at all of the enormous

economic waste, and we had never seen a single strike leader punished as

we had been. We, who had suffered sentences of nine months' imprisonment

for inciting women to mild rebellion, had seen a labour leader who had

done his best to incite an army to mutiny released from prison in two

months by the Government. And now we had come to a point where we saw

civil war threatened, where we read in the papers every day reports of

speeches a thousand times more incendiary than anything we had ever

said. We heard prominent members of Parliament openly declaring that if

the Home Rule Bill was passed Ulster would fight, and Ulster would be

right. None of these men were arrested. Instead they were applauded.

Lord Selborne, one of our sternest critics, referring to the fact that

Ulstermen were drilling under arms, said publicly: "The method which the

people of Ulster are adopting to show the depths of their convictions

and the intensity of their feelings will impress the imagination of the

whole country." But Lord Selborne was not arrested. Neither were the

mutinous officers who resigned their commissions when ordered to report

for duty against the men of Ulster who were actually preparing for civil

war.

What does all this mean? Why is it that men's blood-shedding militancy

is applauded and women's symbolic militancy punished with a prison cell

and the forcible feeding horror? It means simply this, that men's double

standard of sex morals, whereby the victims of their lust are counted as

outcasts, while the men themselves escape all social censure, really

applies to morals in all departments of life. Men make the moral code

and they expect women to accept it. They have decided that it is

entirely right and proper for men to fight for their liberties and their

rights, but that it is not right and proper for women to fight for

theirs.[3]

They have decided that for men to remain silently quiescent while

tyrannical rulers impose bonds of slavery upon them is cowardly and

dishonourable, but that for women to do that same thing is not cowardly

and dishonourable, but merely respectable. Well, the Suffragettes

absolutely repudiate that double standard of morals. If it is right for

men to fight for their freedom, and God knows what the human race would

be like to-day if men had not, since time began, fought for their

freedom, then it is right for women to fight for their freedom and the

freedom of the children they bear. On this declaration of faith the

militant women of England rest their case.

FOOTNOTE:

[3] There is no question that a great deal of the animus directed

against us during 1913 and 1914 by the Government was due to sex

bitterness stirred up by a series of articles written by Christabel

Pankhurst and published in _The Suffragette_. These articles, a fearless

and authoritative expose of the evils of sexual immoralities and their

blasting effect on innocent wives and children, have since been

published in a book called "The Great Scourge, and how to end it,"

issued by David Nutt, New Oxford Street, London W. C.