CHAPTER XI

THE THIRD WOMEN'S PARLIAMENT, AND MORE MILITANT TACTICS

CALLS UPON CABINET MINISTERS. THE THIRD WOMEN'S PARLIAMENT. THE PANTECHNICON VAN STRATAGEM. MRS. PANKHURST'S FIRST ARREST. MR. DICKINSON'S BILL, THE FIRST ALBERT HALL MEETING AND THE BY-ELECTION AT PECKHAM.

Incidents in the Votes for Women campaign now followed each other with such rapidity that they defy the chronicler who wishes to note them down. Because vigorous militancy was the order of the day, the Press teemed with articles upon the abstract question of Votes for Women and with notices of the doings of the Suffragettes. "SUFFRAGETTES IN DOWNING STREET," "CABINET BAITING AS THE LATEST RUSE," "SUFFRAGETTES IN CHAINS." These and others of the same nature, were the startling headlines that one saw in the evening papers on January 17th and in the morning papers of the following day. It was merely that Mrs. Drummond and a number of other members of our Union, knowing that the Cabinet was sitting to decide upon the questions which should find a place in the legislative programme of the forthcoming session had made an attempt to urge upon them the necessity of dealing with the women's claim.

Whilst Press representatives were congregating in Downing Street, to snapshot the Ministers and to gain material for foolish paragraphs describing their appearance and manner of arrival at the first Cabinet Council of the Season, and whilst police were assembling to dance attendance upon the Prime Minister and his colleagues, three or four of the Women appeared to demand an interview. The police pulled them aside and the Cabinet Ministers brushed past as they tried to speak, and when they applied at the door of the official residence, no notice was taken. Then Miss New, well knowing that her words would be heard both inside the House and by the crowd that was collecting in the street, began to make a speech explaining what she and her friends had come for. Before beginning, she chained herself to the railings beside the Prime Minister's front door, both symbolically to express the political bondage of womanhood, and for the very practical reason that this device would prevent her being dragged speedily away. Her example was followed by Nurse Olivia Smith and, whilst the police were struggling to break the double set of chains, a taxicab drove up and stopped on the opposite side of the street. Suspecting more Suffragettes, some of the constables rushed to the door of the cab which opened on to the pavement. At the same moment, Mrs. Drummond (for it was she who had devised this stratagem), opened the cab door on the road side and bounded across to the sacred Residence, where, as there was no one to bar her progress and as she now possessed the secret of the little knob in the centre of the door, she was inside and very near to the Council Chamber itself, before a number of men, some of whom she believed to be Cabinet Ministers, though owing to the violent and hurried nature of her ejection it was impossible to make quite sure, rushed upon her, and she was flung out and hurled down the steps. She was then arrested, and shortly afterwards she and four of her comrades found themselves before Sir Albert de Rutzen at Bow Street Police Court, charged with disorderly conduct. They were found guilty and on refusing to be bound, were sent to prison for three weeks. Instead of placing them in the first division, as had been done in the case of all the Suffragettes since the transfer of Mrs. Cobden Sanderson and the rest of us had taken place in October, 1906, the authorities reverted to the old plan of putting them in the second class.

On January 29th the King opened Parliament in great state, and four members of the Women's Freedom League rushed in to the Royal Procession and attempted to present him with a Petition, but were dragged back and hustled aside by the soldiery and police. The King's speech did not contain any mention of Votes for Women, and the Women's Social and Political Union was already preparing to confer upon the subject at a Women's Parliament to be held in the Caxton Hall on February 11th, 12th, and 13th. In the meantime the Members of the Women's Freedom League had determined to make an immediate protest, and the day after the opening of Parliament they set out to interview six members of the Cabinet. Three of the ladies, Dr. Helen Bourchier, Mrs. Kennindale Cook, a well known novelist, and Miss Munro, a Scotchwoman from Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's constituency, visited Mr. Haldane at his house at Queen Anne's Gate at 9:30. They agreed with the butler to wait outside until Mr. Haldane could see them, but the Secretary of State for War telephoned to the police, who soon appeared in force and placed the women under arrest. The same sort of thing happened at the houses of Sir Edward Grey, Mr. Harcourt and Captain Sinclair. Altogether seven women were arrested and sentenced to terms of imprisonment varying from two to six weeks.

In the afternoon of the same day Mr. Asquith received a deputation from the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. He then definitely said that the Government would not introduce a Vote for Women measure on their own account and also refused to hold out any hope that the Government would allow of the passage of a private Member's Bill. As they left the Treasury offices the so-called "Constitutional" Suffragists agreed that Mr. Asquith's remarks would merely serve _to incite the Suffragettes to further militancy_.

They judged rightly, for the next day nine members of the Women's Freedom League called at Mr. Asquith's house at No. 20, Cavendish Square, and, on being refused an interview with him, decorated his area railings with "Votes for Women" banners and bills, and, using his topmost doorstep as a platform, proceeded to address a crowd of some seventy persons that had collected. Four arrests were the result. The women were brought up before Mr. Plowden at Marylebone Police Court and claimed the right to speak in their own defence, but Dr. Helen Bourchier, the first who uttered a word, was stopped by the would-be witty Mr. Plowden, who said rudely "Behave yourself! You are the bell-wether of the flock." He then declared all the women guilty of obstruction, and ordered them either to pay fines of forty shillings or to undergo one month's imprisonment in the Second Division, saying that he wanted them to understand that if they thought the punishment light, it was because it was all that the Law allowed him to give them, and adding "I do not consider it by any means a fair measure of your deserts."

Meanwhile the reversion to the policy of treating the Suffragettes as ordinary criminals instead of according to them the treatment usually meted out to political prisoners, was being raised in both Houses of Parliament. Earl Russell and others urged the Government that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church," but the Government were deaf alike to appeal and warning.

The Women's Social and Political Union had long realised this, and when the third Women's Parliament met in the Caxton Hall on February 11th, 1908, it did so with all the splendid courage and enthusiasm for militant action that had characterised its predecessors. It was now known that an excellent place in the private Members ballot had been won, and on the Women's Bill, by Mr. Stanger, a Liberal, and it was realised that before February 28th, when the Bill was to come up for second reading, strong pressure must be brought to bear upon the Government to prevent this Bill being wrecked as that of Mr. Dickinson had been in the previous year. It was therefore with an added sense of immediate pressing necessity that the women set out unflinchingly for the old hard fight with overwhelming force. The motion to carry the usual resolution to the Prime Minister was moved by Miss Marie Naylor and Miss Florence Haig both London Members of the Union and both Chelsea portrait painters, and then the whole Hall seemed to rock with the noise of the cheers as the majority of the women present sprang up to form a deputation.

Meanwhile an extraordinary scene had taken place close to the Strangers' Entrance to the House of Commons. It had been anticipated, of course, that the Suffragettes would make an attempt to lay their Resolution before the Prime Minister and a great force of Police was massed in readiness before the House. Just about four o'clock as the long lines of men in their dark-blue uniform waited there, two furniture removal vans slowly approached, coming up Victoria Street and round by the green which surrounds the Abbey and St. Margaret's Church, as though they were about to make their way past the House of Commons and along Millbank towards the Tate Gallery and Westminster Embankment. The first van went slowly by the House, the second crawled leisurely in its wake and along the back ledge of the second van lay a sleepy-looking boy, his eyes idly fixed upon a little man sauntering along the pavement some distance away. Just as this van was passing the Strangers' Entrance the little man dropped a handkerchief, then suddenly the boy sprang from the ledge, the back doors of the van flew open wide, and one-and-twenty women plunged out and made a rush for the House of Commons. They were blinded by the broad daylight after their long ride in the darkness of the van, and as they jumped, many of them fell on their knees and groping helplessly, ran the wrong way. Nevertheless there were some who headed straight for the doorway and two of them managed to get inside, only to be flung back instantly, whilst the police closed round and several arrests were made.

Meanwhile the body of women who had engaged to carry the Resolution to the Prime Minister, had emerged from the Caxton Hall, and having formed up four abreast in orderly procession, had begun to move quietly forward towards the House of Commons. Large crowds had gathered to see them whilst the police were drawn up on either side of the road, and at one point formed a line across the thoroughfare. The constables pushed and jostled the women for some time without altogether preventing their passage, but at Broad Sanctuary, a large contingent of police entirely blocked the way. Undaunted, the women pressed forward, and the crowds, some with the idea of helping the Suffragettes, others from curiosity, pressed forward too. The police charged again and again, and there was grave danger that someone would be trampled under foot. When at last the streets were cleared, it was found that some fifty women had been arrested, amongst these Miss Marie Naylor and Miss Florence Haig, Georgina and Marie Brackenbury, both of them painters, and nieces of General Sir Henry Brackenbury, and Miss Maud Joachim, niece of the great violinist.

The Suffragette cases came on next morning before Mr. Horace Smith at the Westminster Police Court, Mr. Muskett, who prosecuted on behalf of the police, then announced that on this occasion the authorities had decided as before to prosecute under the Prevention of Crimes Amendment Act of 1885, which enabled the Magistrate to inflict a fine of £5 or, in default, to order imprisonment with or without hard labour for two months. Throwing down a remarkable challenge to the women, he added that there were greater and stronger powers in reserve which could be enforced to put down disorder, for there was still upon the Statute Book an Act passed in the reign of Charles II which dealt with "Tumultuous Petitions either to the Crown or Parliament." He recalled the fact that it had been stated by the judge at the time of the Lord George Gordon riots that that Act was still good law, and, he said, that the dictum still applied. The Act of Charles II provided that

No person whatever shall repair to His Majesty or both or either of the Houses of Parliament upon pretence of presenting or delivering any petition, complaint, remonstrance or declaration or other address accompanied with an excessive number of people, nor at any one time with above the number of twelve persons.

Penalties might be enforced under this Act up to a fine of £100 or three months' imprisonment. In holding forth this threat to women who might demonstrate in the future, Mr. Muskett again appealed to the Magistrate to deal with those who were now charged with all the rigour which he would apply to ordinary law-breakers.

The prisoners were then one by one brought in. Georgina Brackenbury, tall, fair, and well featured, was the first to be put into the dock. The Magistrate affected to take scant interest in the case, and in spite of her own splendid courtesy of manner, addressed her with pettish rudeness, and finally interrupted her statement with "That is all nonsense." The whole of the proceedings were conducted in the same spirit. But two women out of the fifty had been imprisoned before, and these two, Mrs. Rigby, the wife of a doctor in Preston, and Mrs. Titterington, as "old offenders," were ordered either to pay fines of £5 or to suffer one month's imprisonment in the third and lowest class. The other forty-seven women were ordered to be bound over in two sureties of £20 to keep the peace for twelve months or to serve six weeks' imprisonment in the second Division. With the exception of two, whose absence from home was found to be impossible owing to the serious illness of relatives, all the women chose imprisonment.

All these things were of course largely discussed in the Press. The furniture van incident attracted the greatest attention, and the van itself was likened by almost every newspaper to the wooden horse of Troy. The _Daily Chronicle_ said:

The Suffragettes are essentially heroic. First they lash themselves to the Premier's railings; now borrowing an idea from the Trojan horse, they burst forth from a pantechnicon van.... A high standard of artifice has been set and it should be maintained. The Trojan horse would have been of no use if it had remained outside the walls, and though curiosity could never be expected to prompt Members to drag a deserted pantechnicon into the House, there must be occasions when a large-sized packing case is taken into St. Stephen's.

The _Glasgow Evening Times_ called for a poet of Hudibrastic gifts to rise and embody in heroic verse the deeds of the Suffragettes, and asserted that "The daring attack yesterday evening on that citadel of democratic liberty, the House of Commons, is of itself sufficient to inspire a Homer, or at least a Peter Pindar." The _Evening News_ said that until the Suffragettes had outwitted the policemen by the use of the furniture van, they had never believed in the story of the Trojan horse, now they knew it to be quite possible after all.

In the Women's Parliament it was the more serious side of the case that appealed to us. We saw that the Government were preparing still further to resist our just and moderate demands, and rather than concede them were even ready to revive ancient coercive Statutes which the customs and principles of modern times had caused to fall into disuse. This Act of Charles II, with which they had threatened us, had originally been passed to obstruct the growth of the Liberal Party, which first came into existence in Stuart times. It was the political descendants of those very Liberals who would now use this coercive Statute against their countrywomen. Well might Christabel Pankhurst ask in the Women's Parliament, "What would have been said if a Tory Government had done this thing?" "This takes us back to stirring times, ladies," she told the women. "At last it is realised that women are fighting for freedom as their fathers fought.... If they want twelve women, aye, and more than twelve, if a hundred women are wanted to be tried under that Act and to be sent to prison for three months they can be found."

There was no militant demonstration on that day, but everyone knew that something more was to happen, and on Thursday afternoon, the 13th of February, when the Women's Parliament met for its concluding session, a feeling of most extraordinary excitement prevailed. Mrs. Pankhurst had just returned from the by-election at South Leeds, and the audience listened eagerly to her account of the campaign, and especially to the story of the torchlight procession and the wonderful meeting of 100,000 people on Hunslett Moor. In spite of the fact that police protection had been refused at the last moment, there had been no disorder, only sympathy and enthusiasm all along the route, whilst the vast crowds that parted to let the procession through had joined on to it and added to its numbers from behind, and some of the women had constantly called out in broad Yorkshire: "Shall us have the vote?" to be answered by others with cries of "we shall."

I have come to London, Mrs. Pankhurst concluded, feeling, as I have never felt before, the seriousness of this struggle. I feel that the time has come when I must act, and I wish to volunteer to be one of those to carry our Resolution to Parliament this afternoon. My experience in the country and especially in South Leeds has taught me things that Cabinet Ministers who have not that experience do not know, and has made me feel that I must make one final attempt to see them and to urge them to reconsider their position before some terrible disaster has occurred.

Then, amid some emotional excitement and cries of "Mrs Pankhurst must not go," "We cannot spare our leader"--cries which were calmly set aside by practical business-like Christabel, who announced that the deputation was definitely chosen and that its thirteen members were all prepared to be arrested and tried under the Charles II Act--the Resolution was carried and Mrs. Pankhurst, Annie Kenney, and eleven other women marched out of the hall, whilst almost the whole of the audience flocked into the corridor and stood around the doorway to watch them go.

Mrs. Pankhurst had been lamed in the cowardly attack that had been made upon her at Mid-Devon, and had not yet recovered. Seeing this Mrs. Drummond ran forward to get a conveyance. She saw none for hire, but called to a man in a private dog-cart and asked him if he would drive Mrs. Pankhurst to the House of Commons. He agreed, and the other women formed up on foot behind the vehicle two and two abreast. The police were already massed around in great force and the little procession had moved but a few slow steps when a Police Inspector came forward and insisted that Mrs. Pankhurst should dismount. She instantly obeyed the order, signing to her companions not to protest. The twelve women of the deputation at the same time hurried forward to re-form in double line behind their leader, but the Inspector and his men dragged them apart. Then the deputation, hemmed in by men, women and police on every side, proceeded in single file as far as Chapel Street. There the Inspector said they must not walk in procession. They therefore broke into twos and threes, but when they came to the entrance of Victoria Street the police entirely barred the way, and it was only after a considerable struggle that they were able to gain the main thoroughfare. There a vast concourse of people had assembled and right in the midst of it one saw Mrs. Pankhurst wearing a long loose cloak whose light grey colour made her figure stand out from the darkly clad men around. She came forward with Mrs. Baldock clinging to her arm, and tall, pretty, smiling young Gladice Keevil, her face a little flushed and her soft hair blowing a little in the wind, walking on the other side, and with the great crowd following and filling the whole street around.

Scattered amongst the people behind and moving forward either singly or in twos, the rest of the deputation followed. Close to Westminster Palace Hotel Mrs. Pankhurst, who up to this point had followed in the wake of a Police Inspector and carefully obeyed all the instructions of the police, was arrested and taken through Parliament Square on the side furthest from the House in the strong grip of two burly policemen. Clad in her heavy travelling cloak, her face had grown white with exhaustion, and she was evidently in pain, but no heed was paid to her lameness, and she was hurried along at a brisk trot, and at last disappeared down the narrow lane at the top of Bridge Street which leads to Canon Row Police Station. Mrs. Baldock and Gladice Keevil, who had refused to leave her, had for this cause been arrested and almost immediately afterwards Annie Kenney was also taken into custody. Later on the same fate befell Mrs. Kerwood of Birmingham and five others, some of whom were not members of the deputation.

Whilst this was happening, the Women's Parliament was still in session, and every now and then someone returned from the battle to describe how events were going. Before the meeting closed our ever thoughtful Treasurer, Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, urged all not on the fighting line to subscribe to the war chest. More than £400 had been raised when the prisoners came back to us on bail at the rising of Parliament.

In the House of Commons itself the Government's hostile attitude towards the Suffragettes was raised as a matter of urgency on the motion for the adjournment, by Sir William Bull, the Unionist member for Hammersmith, who showed genuine concern at the news of Mrs. Pankhurst's arrest. Other members of the same Party followed by jeering at the Government for the marked difference between their treatment of the Suffragist women and the men who had been arrested for cattle driving and similar offences in Ireland. Why was Mr. Ginnell, the Nationalist Member for Westmeath, to receive the privileges of a first class misdemeanant, they asked, whilst Mrs. Pankhurst and her comrades were to be treated as ordinary criminals. Lord Robert Cecil raised a laugh against the President of the Local Government Board, by pointing out that when he, Mr. John Burns, had been in prison for inciting to riot, the Government of the day had intervened to secure preferential treatment for him. In reply to all this Mr. Gladstone refused to take any action, saying that the women could come out of prison whenever they liked.

When Mrs. Pankhurst and her comrades were brought up at Westminster Police Court before Mr. Horace Smith, next day, it was found that the authorities, who were perhaps disappointed at the way in which their challenge had been accepted, had changed their minds and instead of prosecuting the women as they had threatened under the Charles II Act, had decided to revert to the old method of stigmatising the whole affair as a mere vulgar brawl with the Police. Probably thinking the true facts would arouse too much public sympathy, the prosecution put forward as evidence an absolute tissue of falsehood, in which it was stated that the deputation had set out from the Caxton Hall singing and shouting in the noisiest manner and that they had knocked off the helmets of the police and had assaulted them right and left. As we have seen everything had been done most quietly, and Mrs. Pankhurst herself had carefully complied with every order from the police short of abandoning her intention to reach the House of Commons. Our rebutting evidence was disregarded and Mrs. Pankhurst's own statement in the dock was cut short by Mr. Horace Smith's saying, "I have nothing to do with that. It only amounts to another threat to break the law, and it is in no way relevant here. You, like the others, must find sureties in £20 for twelve months' good behaviour or be imprisoned for six weeks in the Second Division."

Then as usual the women were hurried off in the van to prison, the Holloway gates were closed upon them, and the Government settled down to forget them as far as it could until next time.

February 28th was the day for the discussion of the Women's Enfranchisement Bill, in moving its second reading, Mr. H. Y. Stanger, whilst he carefully dissociated himself from the methods of the Suffragettes, reminded the House that, if in the course of a political agitation, excesses were committed, the authorities should search for the cause of the discontent and apply an appropriate remedy. Mr. Cathcart Wason, another Liberal member, but an anti-Suffragist, declared on the other hand that the Suffragette movement was founded on riot, and that the House should not "yield to clamour"; yet with an entire lack of consistency, he went on to extol physical force, saying that because in his opinion women could make no contribution to this, they ought not to be allowed to vote. Evidently he forgot that, whilst the whole trend of civilisation has been in the direction of mental rather than physical dominance, in the age when physical force was the governing power, women were actually members of the legislature and, that they retained the right to vote for Members of Parliament throughout the ages when its possession was looked upon as a burden and until, having become a privilege, it was wrested from them. But all this talk was mere word spinning. It was a pronouncement from the Government benches, that was eagerly awaited. As last time, it was Mr. Herbert Gladstone who spoke, and for the Ministry, and he soon disclosed the fact that the Government was still determined to make no move. It was the old story of opposition in the Cabinet and the old excuse that no party in the House was united either for or against the question. As for the Bill he himself intended to vote for it, for, he said, making an important admission which his colleagues might well have taken to heart, "It may be imperfect, but at any rate _it removes a disqualification and an inequality which have been for so long a deep source of complaint with great masses of the people of this country_." Then Mr. Gladstone went on to make some very remarkable statements, of which both he and the Government were afterwards to be reminded. He said amongst other things:

Men have had to struggle for centuries for their political rights.... On the question of Women's Suffrage, experience shows that predominance of argument alone--and I believe that that has been attained--is not enough to win the political day.

In any reform movement, he went on to explain, various stages had to be gone through; first there was the stage of "academic discussion," and the ventilation of "pious opinions" unaccompanied by "effective action," but after this, he continued, becoming perhaps a little carried away by his own words;

Comes the time when political dynamics are far more important than political argument. You have to move a great inert mass of opinion which, in the early stages, always exists in the country in regard to questions of the first magnitude.... Men have learned this lesson and know the necessity for demonstrating the greatness of their movement and for establishing that _force majeure_ which actuates and arms a Government for effective work. That is the task before the supporters of this great movement.... Looking back at the great political crises in the thirties, the sixties and the eighties, it will be found that people did not go about in small crowds, nor were they content with enthusiastic meetings in large halls; they assembled in their tens of thousands all over the country.

"But," said Mr. Gladstone, "of course it is not to be expected that women can assemble in such masses," but, "power belongs to the masses and through this power a Government can be influenced into more effective action than a Government will be likely to take under present conditions."

Mr. Rees (Liberal) then made an attempt to talk out this Bill as he had done that of Mr. Dickinson the year before, and, after firing off all the jokes that he could think of, he fell back upon the Scriptures, saying, "Jerusalem is ruined and Judah has fallen. As for my people, children are their oppressors and women rule over them.... Because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with stretched-forth necks, therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion and in that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments."

But at this point he was interrupted by Lord Robert Cecil who moved the closure of the debate, and, on the Speaker's accepting the motion and its being agreed to without a division, a vote was taken upon the Bill itself, in which 271 members voted for the Bill and only ninety-two against. There was therefore a favourable majority of 179, the largest that had ever been cast in support of Women's Suffrage.

Unfortunately it now appeared that Mr. Stanger had been informed beforehand that the closure resolution, which would prevent the talking out of the Bill, would only be accepted on condition that he, as the Bill's sponsor, would move that it be referred to a Committee of the whole House instead of passing automatically to one of the Grand Committees. Mr. Stanger had agreed to the condition and now fulfilled the promise that had been exacted, and the result was that nothing further could be done with the Bill unless the Government would provide time for its discussion.

Had the Cabinet been prepared to act honourably and to stand by the statement of their spokesman, Mr. Gladstone, the position would now have been that, if the women who wanted votes could organise a series of demonstrations which could compare with those held by men in support of the various extensions of the franchise that had already taken place, the Government would concede their demands and would either provide time for the passage into law of Mr. Stanger's Bill or introduce and put through its various stages a measure of their own framing. The Women's Social and Political Union were prepared to accept Mr. Gladstone's challenge.

When Mrs. Pankhurst and the other women had gone to prison, their comrades of the W. S. P. U., at Mrs. Pethick Lawrence's suggestion, had entered upon a week of self-denial in order to raise funds for the campaign. The thought of those who were in prison spurred on every member of the Union to renewed zeal. Some went canvassing from house to house for money. Others stood with collecting boxes at regular pitches in the street. At the Kensington High Street District Railway Station, for instance, four well known women writers, Miss Evelyn Sharpe, Miss May Sinclair, Miss Violet Hunt, and Miss Clemence Housman, were gathering in pennies all through those wintry days. Some women sold flowers, swept crossings, became pavement artists and played barrel organs. Poorer members obliged to work continuously for a living, denied themselves sugar and milk in their tea, butter on their bread, and walked to and from their work, in order to be able to give something to the funds. The result of this week of earnest effort was to be announced at a great meeting at the Albert Hall on March 19th, to advertise which a great box kite, with a flag attached, was hanging over the Houses of Parliament for a fortnight, whilst a similar flag floated over Holloway Gaol to cheer the prisoners within.

Every seat in the great Albert Hall was sold long before the day of the meeting, and hundreds of people were turned away at the doors. The vast audience was composed almost entirely of women, and there were 200 women stewards in white dresses. The platform was decorated with flowers and thronged with ex-prisoners and the officials of the Union, but as the sentences of Mrs. Pankhurst and eight of her comrades were not to expire until the following morning, the Chairman's seat which the founder of the Union should have occupied, was left vacant and in it was placed a large white card bearing the inscription "Mrs. Pankhurst's chair."

Throughout that great gathering there was a wonderful spirit of unity and not one woman there could wish in her heart, as so many millions have done, "if I had only been a man." No, they were rather like to pity those who were not women and so could not join in this great fight, for to-day it was the woman's battle. The time was gone when she must always play a minor part, applauding, ministering, comforting, performing useful functions if you will, incurring risks, too, and making sacrifices, but always being treated and always thinking of herself as a mere incident of the struggle outside the wide main stream of life. To-day this battle of theirs seemed to the women to be the greatest in the world, all other conflicts appeared minor to it. A great wave of enthusiasm had caught them up and they were ready to break out into cheers and clapping at the least excuse. Fate, in the person of the Government, had provided an incident entirely in keeping with their mood, for Christabel immediately announced that Mrs. Pankhurst and the remaining prisoners had been unexpectedly released, and Mrs. Pankhurst herself walked quietly on to the platform to take possession of the vacant chair.

Then it was a wonderful sight to see the up-springing of those thousands of women from those rows and rows of seats and tiers and tiers of boxes and galleries sloping to the roof of the great circular hall. There was a sea of waving arms and handkerchiefs and a long chorus of cheers,--with no greater welcome could any leader have been met. The founder of the Union stood there quite still in her dark grey dress, and her face, usually pale, had that strangely blanched look, which comes to prisoners. When, as the applause subsided, she stepped forward to speak to the assembled women, it was evident that she was deeply moved by their greeting, and as she told how the chief wardress had come to her cell at two o'clock that afternoon to tell her that an order had come for her immediate release, one felt that she was very tired and almost overwhelmed by the sharp contrast between that great brightly lighted hall, with its vast seething throng of human beings, and the still silence of the prison cell. She had heard, she told the women,--"for these things filter even into prison"--that the Bill had successfully passed its second reading, but she said, and all present knew that she spoke rightly, that if ever the Bill were to become an Act, women must do ten times more yet than they had ever done in the past.

"I for one, friends," Mrs. Pankhurst cried, and we knew that she was thinking of the women she had seen in prison, "I for one, looking round on the sweated and decrepit members of my sex, say that men have had control of these things long enough and that no woman with any spark of womanliness in her will consent to allow this state of things to go on any longer. We are tired of it, we want to be of use and to have the power to make the world a better place both for men and women than it is to-day." She paused then and went on to express quietly but with deep feeling her joy in this great woman's movement that a few years before she had thought she would never live to see. The old cry had been, "You will never rouse women," but she said, "we have done what they thought, and what they hoped, to be impossible; we women are roused." At those words they stopped her with their cheers.

Then Annie Kenney rose to tell the story of her first and only other visit to the Royal Albert Hall, when she had gone there to ask of the newly elected and triumphant Liberal Ministry, a pledge for the enfranchisement of her sex. That night, two years before, she had been received with cries of abuse and howled down by an audience of angry men. "There seemed to be thousands against one," she said, "but I did not mind because I knew that our action that night was like summer rain on a drooping flower; it would give new life to the woman's movement."

And now Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, our Treasurer, was to come forward to give yet one more proof that Annie Kenney's words were true. When the treasurer had imagined that Mrs. Pankhurst's chair was to be an empty one, she had planned that those present should place in it an offering of money for the cause, but now she would be able to place that offering in the founder's hands. Towards the sum that was collected there was already the £2,382 11s. 7d, which had been raised by the devotion and sacrifice of members of the Union during the week of self denial; a promise of £1,000 a year till women were enfranchised, from a lady who wished to remain anonymous, and a second £1,000 which Mrs. Lawrence herself, in conjunction with her husband, wished to give. And now it was for the audience to do their part.

Whilst the treasurer had been speaking, Mr. Lawrence had been arranging a scoring apparatus. Then, one by one, twelve women rose up in the hall and each promised to give £100. Their example was followed by numbers of others. At the same time, promise cards, filled up by members of the audience, were constantly being handed to the platform, where Mrs. Lawrence read them out. At last the sum of £7,000 had been set up, and, with a stirring call from Christabel to work at the by-elections at Peckham and Hastings in which the Union was then engaging, the meeting closed.

As it was in London, the Peckham election was of course most noticed by the Press and, because it was so near its headquarters, the Women's Social and Political Union was able to put up the biggest fight there.

On Peckham Rye, a stretch of common land where hosts of preachers and speakers of all kinds are to be heard on every holiday, each of the parties in the election, including the Suffragettes, began by holding a meeting on the first Sunday of the contest. There was a good deal of rather dangerous horseplay which ominously recalled the Mid-Devon election, the Suffragettes being chief target of the disturbers. But before many days were over the situation had entirely changed. Peckham, as every Londoner knows, is one of that great forest of suburbs of mushroom growth on the south side of the river. Its miles and miles of dingy streets are lined with monotonous rows of ugly little houses which the jerry builder tries to convert into villa residences by disfiguring with heavy over-ornamented stone work and by planting a useless pillar on either side of the narrow doorway. A large proportion of these little dwellings are tenanted by at least two families, and the district is given over to small shopkeepers and clerks, shop assistants, teachers and those who belong more frankly to the working classes. No one who can afford to live elsewhere chooses to live in Peckham; it is full of honest worthy people, but there is nothing romantic or attractive about it.

The Suffragettes opened their Committee Rooms in the High Street and soon seemed to be everywhere. They were riding up and down on the noisy electric tram cars and dashing along Rye Lane, where the cheap shops are and where on Saturday nights you can buy everything for half the usual price at the costermongers' stalls, chalking the pavements, giving out handbills, and speaking at the street corners, and soon it was found that these busy, active women had not only converted almost everyone in the district to the justice of their claims, but had captured the heart of the constituency. How had it happened? Partly, it may be, because of the romance and colour that they had brought into the humdrum Peckham life, but perhaps the following impressions of "An Enthusiast" which appeared in the _Daily Mail_ in the midst of the election will best explain the mystery:

Three happy girls, eyes laughter-lit, breezy, buoyant, joyous, arm in arm, talking like three cascades, are making a royal progress down "the lane that leads to Rye." Such is the head of the comet. Just a glance at the tail. A heterogeneous nebula of human life--all ranks and ages, both sexes and all professions, following, jostling, bustling, hustling. Miss Christabel Pankhurst shakes herself free from one of her supporters, and takes under her wing a barefoot, ragged urchin, whose eyes are dancing with glee and pride, for his pals are envious. Who is he that that gloved hand should rest caressingly upon his shoulder? The girl and the gamin trudge along together. "Oh, ain't she just sweet?" says a factory girl, "and fancy 'er abeen to prison!" "Carn't she tork--my word?" chimes in her mate. "Why, she just shut up them blokes as arsked the questions just like a man, she did!"

Her magnetism lies in her complexity, her bafflingness, her buoyance, her radiant health, her colouring--that of the inside of a seashell. She is so every inch alive--the very exuberance of life, body and mind. Not the racked intensity that comes of nerves high strung and over-active brain, but just that finger-tip aliveness which comes of perfect health and perfect happiness in engrossing occupation.

This girl orator and organiser, martyr and crusader, holds and sways her crowds by a very network of antithesis, and her rosy face is the index of her complexity. Defiance chases demureness; she flings a madcap word and then lectures you like a schoolmistress.

One moment reticent, grave, and serious, then simmering with mischief, as she lays a Cabinet Minister or a man in the crowd safely upon his back--O rash questioner! Then her wilfulness--that puckered chin tells a tale--yet her willingness to listen and to learn. Her melting, comprehending sympathy for the sorrowful and heavy-laden--her rapier wit and repartee, but ever smothered in the white sugar of good humour. All these you see--some, when sitting in the background of the trolly, she seeks to hide from the public stare, which she shrinks from with a maiden's modesty when not actually engaged in speaking--others, when with lissome figure swaying, in rhythmic sympathy with the outpouring words, she fastens her mind and yours upon the point at issue.

And then her unconscious petulance. That green veil of hers tied under her chin that would for ever get awry. Yes, she is very, very feminine, and that is what will win the vote for women.

With a voice that never tires (nor ever tires the listener), she is born to charm the ear with an ebb and flow of sweet sound--sound so clear, so silver, so bell-like, now rising, now falling, now rushing and tumultuous, now measured and tempered and austere--earnest and grave--impetuous, a very volley, ardent, burning, scathing, denunciatory--then sinking to appeal to low notes and something near to sadness.

Shall I speak of her logic? It is inexorable. It is not on mere smart retort that she depends when heckled--she has a good case and relies on it. She is saturated with facts, and the hecklers find themselves heckled, twitted, tripped, floored. I think they like it. She does, and shows it. She flings herself into the fray, and literally pants for the next question to tear to shreds. Her questioners are for the most part earthenware, and this bit of porcelain does them in the eye, quaintly, daintily, intellectually, glibly.

Look to it, Mr. Gautrey, or the witchery of Christabel will "do you in the eye."

No, the electors of Peckham agreed, these Suffragettes were not the sort of women they had read of. They were neither the "disorderly," "shouting," "abusive," "unsexed," "violent" creatures, nor the "soured," "dry," and "disappointed" women they had been led to expect.

It was not merely the "enthusiast" in the _Daily Mail_ who testified to the work that the Suffragettes were doing. Conservative newspapers, though they generally preferred to ignore the Suffragettes because, though opposing the Government, they were not supporting either the Conservative candidates or their proposals, nevertheless they allowed some of the truths that the special correspondent told them about the women's campaign to filter into their columns.

The _Standard_ said: "These women are prepared to kill themselves with fatigue and exposure, not for the vote but for what the vote means." The _By-Stander_ said: "The ladies' tongues have been tireless and their brains inexhaustible. Of all the assembled bodies, and their name was legion, who thronged Peckham, theirs has been the most persistent." The _Pall Mall Gazette_ said: "Everybody seems agreed that the best speeches in the election are being made by the lady Suffragists," whilst the _Daily Mail_ asserted that "in no contest have the Suffragettes figured so largely or done such harm to the Radical candidate."

There is a type of man who will sometimes ask a woman's advice about politics and may even admit that she is not only a better speaker than he is but knows more about public questions than he will ever know, and who yet thinks it quite tolerable that she should be forever debarred from voting, though he has had that privilege since he was twenty-one. Men of this type are usually great followers of Party, and allow their ideas of right and wrong in politics to be almost entirely dictated by the actions of the very fallible gentlemen who happen to be their Party leaders. Liberals of this type, whether editors of newspapers, journalists, Members of Parliament, or merely rank and file, had always condemned the Suffragettes because the Liberal party happened to be attacked by them.

The Suffragette opposition at Peckham caused them to be more indignant than ever, for Peckham was a Liberal seat that had been held at the last election by the great majority of 2,339 votes, and if this big majority were to be pulled down they feared that the House of Lords would be emboldened to throw out the Government's Licensing Bill which was then being debated in Parliament. It was true that, though the Liberals now spoke of this Bill as being of paramount importance, they had themselves been just as keen upon a host of other questions and had over and over again before this called upon the Suffragettes to stand aside and refrain from pressing their claim at what on each occasion they assured them was _the crisis_ of all crises. First it had been that the Liberal Government might come safely into power that they had charged the women to wait, then that Free Trade might be put out of danger, then for the passage of the Education Bill, the Plural Voting Bill and every measure put forward. In every case they assumed that the proposal advanced by the Liberal Cabinet was the only possible solution of the problem and in spite of the differences of opinion amongst men, they maintained that no right-minded woman could conscientiously wish for any other.

When it came to the question of the Licensing Bill, the Liberal politicians declared that the sole issue of the election was between the Licensing Bill on the one hand and intemperance on the other. This was absurd, for if the Liberals wished to be rid of the Suffragette opposition, they had only to remove their veto from the Woman's Bill.

On the morning after their release from Holloway, Mrs. Pankhurst and the other ex-prisoners drove off to Peckham in brakes and paraded the constituency holding meetings at various points, and worked there incessantly until the end. A procession of their own ex-prisoners was also organised by the Suffragettes of the Women's Freedom League who were also helping to fight the Government in this election. The Liberals retorted by displaying a big stocking, blue, the Peckham Liberals colour, labelled, "since my wife turned Suffragette I can't get my stockings darned!" but this fell very flat. On polling day the _Star_ showed its belief in the strong influence which women were exerting in the election, by making its final appeal on behalf of the Government candidate, not to the men voters but to the women of Peckham. The Suffragettes were stationed at every polling booth, and, as the voters passed in, many of those who had hitherto voted for the Liberal party handed their colours and polling cards to the women with a promise to vote against the Government on this occasion. On seeing this one of the Liberal officials became so angry that he threatened to prosecute a member of the Freedom League under the Corrupt Practices Act.

In the evening after the poll closed, Mrs. Drummond, upon whom the organisation of the Suffragettes' campaign had chiefly fallen, and who had been too busy all day even to get a meal, repaired to the Town Hall where the votes were being counted. As she stood waiting on the steps, weariness showing at last in every line of her bonnie round face and sturdy little figure, the door-keeper, invited her to rest in the entrance hall until the result was known. Presently she heard a loud burst of shouting, and a number of men, in the midst of whom was Mr. Winston Churchill, came running down the stairs from the count. She started up, eager to learn the news, but was swept out into the street in the midst of those who were impetuously rushing on. At that moment there flared out a magnesium light--red, the Conservative colour. It was known that the Government candidate had been defeated,[25] and the huge crowd outside broke into cheers. Mr. Churchill was pushed about like anyone else, and had to work his way out of the throng, but the working men seeing Mrs. Drummond there, a worker like themselves, who had been labouring strenuously amongst them during the past week, and whom they all thoroughly respected, crowded round her cheering, and as her husband's constituents did to little Scotch Maggie in Mr. Barrie's play "What Every Woman Knows," they lifted her shoulder-high, and bore her in triumph down the street. But Mrs. Drummond felt exceedingly uncomfortable in this exalted state, and, asking to be released, hurriedly sped away.

Now that their late majority of 2,339 had been turned into a majority for the Conservatives of 2,494, the Liberals proceeded to heap abuse upon the electors and to assert that the contest had been disgraced by unprecedented corruption and insobriety. But the experience of the Suffragettes was that the election was one of the most sober and orderly that they had ever attended, and their feeling was that the defeat of the Liberal candidate was very much more largely due to the Government's refusal to grant votes to women and to its coercive treatment of the women's movement than to any other cause. This opinion was shared by many others. Dr. Robert Esler, the Divisional Surgeon for Peckham, wrote to the _Daily Telegraph_ as follows:

_Sir_:

The statement was advanced several times that the new member was floated into the House on beer.... Lest others should infer from the words that the electors constitute a drunken community, may I, being in a position to know the facts, indicate them.... During the ten days of intense tension in canvassing and speaking, there was literally no insobriety.... The charges at the police station fell much below the usual low average, ... and there was not a single assault case.... In my opinion a high moral tone was imparted at the beginning by the presence on the Rye of the ladies who took part in the proceedings. Their dignified demeanour and cultured oratory made a profound impression, and I think this should not be overlooked when considering the result.

Mr. St. John G. Ervine wrote to the Liberal organ, _The Nation_, on March 28th, saying:

There is not a man in the National Liberal Club to-day who does not know that Mid-Devon was lost to the Liberals because of the adverse action of the militant suffragists, a fact which was patent even to the rowdy mob who rolled Mrs. Pankhurst in the mud when the result of that poll was declared. There is not a Liberal member to-day who does not dread the prospect of a General Election with the absolute certainty that he will have to fight, not only the usual enemy, but also a very determined body, which, at the present time, has no political creed other than that expressed in the three words "Votes for Women." I am wrong, there is one man who does not seem to realise all this, to whom Mid-Devon was not a warning, to whom Peckham will convey no sign of further trouble, the Premier elect, Mr. Asquith.... This Peckham election has been a revelation to me of the perfectly wonderful forces which the Women's Social and Political Union are bringing to bear on by-elections.... As a purely impartial observer of the Peckham election I submit to you, Sir, and to the Liberal party, that it is time they started doing something for the women. The mandate might not have been there in 1906, but it most certainly is there now.

Mr. Gooch, the successful candidate, stated: "A great feature of this election has been the activity of the supporters of women's suffrage." And even the _Daily News_, which published a correspondence from its readers dealing with the Liberal defeat at Peckham, stated in its issue of March 31st, that the majority of the letters received referred to the action taken by the Suffragettes.

FOOTNOTES:

[25] The figures were:

Mr. C. A. Gooch (C) 6,970 Mr. T. Gautrey (L) 4,476 _____ Majority 2,494

The figures at the General Election had been:

Mr. Charles G. Clarke (L) 5,903 Sir F. G. Banbury (C) 3,564