WARLIKE WOMEN.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5, 3 May 1912, Page 3

WARLIKE WOMEN.

WILL MILITANT METHODS HELP

THE CAUSE

EFFECT ON TRADE AND THE GENERAL COMMUNITY.

A SERIOUS BUSINESS

Strange things have happened in her time to England, but it is open to question whether, considering the state of civilisation at which we are supposed to have arrived in this year Of grace, just as • strange occurrence? do not take place right Under our civilised noses as, failing to get what they wanted, the ancient .Britons took it and paid in right good blows. It would take a Dickens, with that wizard's masterly wielding of the power of antithesis to paint the London world as it is to-day, minus prejudice, condemnation, sympathy, but with the cold impartiality of an Onlooker. It is a time of powerful wealth and pitiful poverty, a day of pseudo defiance by Labour of Capital because Labour is out on a devil-may-care jaunt unmindful—because it scarcely realises—the grinning hideousness of the Nemesis that wails the exhaustion of its own capital. It is a reign of law-enforcing power, from the King on his throne to tho official who must take tho life of the man. who has taken life. Yet it is a reign of bitter lawlessness.

And, stranger still, it is a time when, in the name of something that has almost assumed tho dimensions of a religion, everything contrary to tho requirements and dictates of religion is being employed to brandish its virtues.

Within a week—indeed, within half an hour—has occurred something that in a time of dire stress and national anxiety has filled the minds of men and women of all classes, almost to tho exclusion of all else, and that thing is Woman Suffrage.

Is one in a 'bus, a train, a restaurant, theatre, office, a park, street or public building (still open to the public), one topic one must catch phrases of, and that not the injustice of withholding votes from taxpaying women, not tho virtues of womanhood idealised, hut militant methods.

And the reason is not far to seek. It is a week since the first thunderbolt fell, but the noise of its resounding, the evidences of its fall, are too apparent to escape the notice of any not absolutely blind. It is a fortunate individual who, not afoot, can manage to travel from the City to the West End unimpeded save by ordinary blocks at street co\ners.

Enormous drays stop the way of all traffic—great wagons laden with the commodity that, with prison gate*?, should in future be utilised as a' barrier for the militants—glass. ' ! ' On Saturday morning the writer walked along Regent, Bond, and 'Okford Streets, those thoroughfare^-'of all the outward and visible signs d* culture, wealth and loveliness in shop windows; along Cockspur Street, the dwelling place of magnificent buildings dovotcd to shipping offices; past the couchant lions at Nelson's feet, and up the Strand with its ..finger-pi'stf;'' to history—everywhere splinterec! glass and ruined windows told 1 the same tale of violent lawlessness—for everywhere, in practically one of every two windows one passed, an eloquent story was legibly writ. Messages in Glass. Militants say it reads: "We break man's law—those members of Parliament who failed to keep their promises broke God's." Suffragists who have waited weary years, and felt■' that the chances of woman suffrage becoming law this year were favourable, are heavy-hearted at the censure passed on the whole cause for the violence of a few; anti-suffragettes are jubilant; the general public, at least, fairly tolerant till now, is inclined to be strongly anti-suffragists and public opinion, that infinitely despicable, infinitely powerful, and terribly necessary adjunct to all support, it almost militant itself in its antipathy. The muddledum is extraordinary. In order to secure for women the rights that they deserve, militant suffragettes have brought on many wrongs totally undeserved. The faintest suggestion that there is a suffragette near ensures the wildest panic—there is no denying that she is an object of terror. The Royal Academy is closed a fortnight before its exhibition was timetabled to finish, the British Museum, Hampton Court Palace and many others are sedulously barred to the most innocent members of the community. Going to the Turner rooms at the Tate Gal lory, on Wednesday, one was met with the information, "Closed to the public because of the Suffragettes." Tho only unison in all this discord is that of the repairers, and it is safe to say that only glaziers' and plateglass sellers are joining hands with the suffragettes over this business. The general effect on women and on the man in the street's attitude to women is extraordinary. The last does not matter much, men paying infinitely more heed to the misdeeds and stupidities of this mythical member of their own sex than women, but the other affair gives us furiously to think. The writer this week went into a shop in the West End. Its window,-, bore the now well-known trade mark of boards and brown paper and were guarded by members of the staff. Indoors, hardly any shoppers. From the time I entered, w;is escorted unstairs, through several departments, and to my destination, all through my shopping, and until T reached the street, I was shadowed. Numbers of other women shopping notice the same thing. The effects on trade has undoubtedly been grave. It has become a matter of genuine

danger for any woman to appear in tho London streets at night wearing a suffragetto badge. Yesterday a delivery containing "Votes for Women" was driven into Oxford Circus—the Scene of much damage—by the Hon. Mrs Haver-field and another lady for the purpose of delivery to news-vendors. The cart and horse were seized by the by-stand-eris, the suffragist flags and papers pulled to bits, the whip, which the horsewoman prepared to use, snapped in two, and, before the two unfortunates were rescued by the police, one had been severely belaboured by an hysterical old man's umbrella.

The mere suspicion that a woman is a suffragette—though she may be strongly anti—is sufficient to subject her to all manner of unwelcome attentions from the roughest spirit;; in the crowd. An effigy of Mips Christobel Pankhurst was carried through West End streets by hordes of excited medical students last night and greeted with howls.

Sympathy, the suffragettes point out scornfully, has existed for years—not dozens but scores of petitions have been sent to the House of Common;: from borough councils and ther apparently influential bodies asking them to give votes to women—but all to no avail. Therefore they contend that in risking the alienation of public support they were risking what has been proved to be of no value—a point that outsiders find it difficult to follow. .

At present things in or out or round about woman ; suffrage are in such, a ferment that it is difficult to see what effect this week's doings are likely to have on the Woman Suffrage Bill, now before Parliament.

Militants, after all, though, through t/.olr actions, tlm host known of the many woman suffrage societies hy no means represent the thousands of women who are asking for justice to their Bex. To deliberately shelve the Bill because of the action of the militants must seem to fair-minded people childish in the extreme, though the bitter anger and impatience abroad must be as easily understood. Tn the meantime the leader—Mrs Pankhurst—lies in prison, under sentence. Mr and Mrs Pethick Lawrence await trial on the very serious charge of inciting their followers to acts of violence against the laws of the country, the subject is in everyone's mouth, and it remains to be seen whether, in following the precedent that violence (and on a much more terrible Scale than anything yet attempted by women) gave men the votes that are entitling them to withhold them from women, the militants are going to help the cause.—Auckland Star's London 'lady correspondent, March 9th.