SUFFRAGETTES AND MARRIAGE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 648, 4 March 1914, Page 6

SUFFRAGETTES AND MARRIAGE.

Certain prominent journalists are very fond of summing up the suffragette militant tactics as the wild revolt against Fate, of a body of women who find it impossible to get husbands. Again and again, in referring to this subject they make the same extraordinary statements without apparently ever taking the trouble to look at the real facte of the case. As a'matter of fact, the most pronounced militants, and the prominent leaders, as well as a large proportion of the rank and file are married women. As fo' the rest the accusation is Bbsurd in another way. Far he it from me to deny that every normal woman wants a husband, ana desires to bear children —it is only right and natural that she should, and if she morries the right man, she jas doubtless chosen the better part. But is it feasible for one moment that the suffragettes can possibly suppose their wild and mischievous behaviour at all calculated to attract husbands. If the desire for matrimony were the impelling force, their aim and object would be to vie with one another in attractiveness, and so secure such husbai.ds as were at hand. A clever and beautiful girl, like Christabel Pankhurst, would surely have no need to go begging for a husband. As for the superfluous number emigration to some colony where the men preponderate would solve the difficulty; and though no doubt it would be hard for many of these gently bred ladies to up oot their lives from the Mother Country, it would be no harder than tne martyrdom many of them must have endured in dragging themselves loose from all the traditions of English ladies, and opposing themselves to the jeers of the whole world. For, mistaken and mischievous as their tactics may be, I cannot look upon these women as merely senseless disturbers of the public peace. Rather I think they have looked with clear eyes upon the abuses arising from a Government by man alone—man does his best, but the nation is just one great home, and thrre are a thousand details in its management, whi h should be left with woman—a thousand departments where woman ought to have her say, and until she does, great abuse will prevail, and, in the old homeland, are some which surely must make the angels weep. These women, too. have looked into the record of history, and have seen there how all great reformß have been opposed by those "dressed in a little brief authority," and how this opposition has again and again been met by violence, and conquered so Then, delierately, they have sacrificed the tradition of their womanhood for the furtherance of a reform which they conceive to be absolutely essential to the welfare of their nation. They are willing to endure obloquy, hunger, even death itself, in the pursuit of their ideal, and that does not seem to be the wild, undisciplined, ignorant revolt of a band of hysterical women, impelled by sex desire, and seeking they know not what. We can admire their ideals, while we deplore the crudity and unrighteousness of their methods. No, what the suffragettes want is no more and no less, and no other, <;han they claim to want—a share in the government of the nation of which they form part. —F. U. Advocate.