The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. SATURDAY, MAY 24, 1913. THE MILITANT SUFFRAGETTE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVI, Issue 16, 24 May 1913, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTL ER. SATURDAY, MAY 24, 1913. THE MILITANT SUFFRAGETTE.

Whatever may he the attitude in regard to the militant suffragette movement in England it is certainly a ! movement that cannot bo ignored. When frenzied women, and those who are with them, are destroying property as they now are doing, and are resorting to outrage and violence in order to focuss public attention on their demands, it is -utterly impossible for the Government to treat- the problem with indifference. What solution of the very difficult question will be found it is impossible to predict, and public writers, whethet they sympathise with the action now being taken, or deplore it as a. huge mistake, are equally at a loss to point a way out. Miss Elizabeth Robins, the American fiction writer and worker in the cause of social reform, who has lived in London for some years, has published a. book entitled, “Way Stations,” in which narrative is cleverly combined with comment and arI gumont, with the object of justifying i not only the demand of the fran- | rinse for women, hut also the extreme. | methods adopted by the militant wing | of the movement, in the hope of fore-j I nig the Government to give it to them. The hook consists largely of papers and addresses connected by a short narrative, winch Miss Robbins claims to ho “the only succinct account in existence of the main linej of the militant suffrage movement.” Miss Robins performs the useful function of presenting a record, or. as she .calls it, a “time-table” of the principal events in the history of the movement from the year 1905, when the militant suffragette began to harry the then Prime Minister, the late Sir Henrv Campbell-Bannerman, down to the defeat of the Conciliation Bill of 1012. Since the story closed there has, of course, been a much more decisive parliamentary defeat, followed immediately by an unprecedented erupt ion of militant exploits, including bomb outrages and acts of incendiarism. The following on of events this year seems to show that the more energetically the militants break the laws and the windows of their country the more firmly will Parliament refuse t:: allow

them to share in the business of law-' making. Whore it will all end one ■ can only look on and wonder. .Return- < ing 10 the book its weakness appears 11! lie that while it sets out to justify ; the militants; it quite fails at any really serious attempt at such justification. In discussing the conflict which has arisen between the sexes, Miss Robins writes without bitterness and describes the present position in which men are the workers, the lighters, and the conductors of public affairs, while, women are expected toj exercise patience at the cradle and the hearth, as an arrangement which has come about with iio blame or credit on either side. “It was the best working arrangement,” she remarks, “that the uncivilised could devise. The trouble with it to-day is that it long ago served its purpose, and became outworn. Wo all, men and women alike, have arrived at a place where we must devise something better.” However much one may agree with this sentiment, it is Certainly open to j doubt that the right to vote will make! matters much bettor.