WOMEN'S FRANCHISE

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3025, 23 October 1908, Page 5

WOMEN'S FRANCHISE

CABLE NEWS.

United Press Association—% Electric Telegraph copyright.

SUFFRAGETTES BEFORE THE COURT.

CASES ADJOURNED

Received October 22, 11.30 p.m LONDON, October 22.

The hearing of the cases against suffragettes, who were arrested in connection with the recent demonstration, was continued at the Bow Street Police Court yesteruay. Miss Christabel Pankhurst, one of the suffragettes arrested, elicited from Mr Lloyd George (Chancellor of the Exchequer) that he was present at Trafalgar Square meeting on October 11th. Mr Lloyd-George, in his evidence, said that he considered the demonstrations formidable, but he thought the suffragists' appeal to the public to rush the House of Commons was very serious.

Mr Herbert Gladstone (Home examined, said that though the rushing of the House of Commons meant the employment of force, the result of the suffragist demonstration against the House of Commons was thirty-seven arrerts and forty watches and purses stolen. Defendants insisted that Liberal statesmen had encouraged the suffragists to adopt the line of action they had followed. The hearing of the cases was further adjourned.

Miss Christabel Pankhurst, who has, with her mother and Mrs Drummond, been placed under arrest, is the Joan of Arc of the English suffragette movement. She is perhaps the most romantic figure which has appeared in the English political arena during the past century. It has been,her enthusiasm, more than anything else, which haa carried the "Votes for Women" banner to the very door of St. Stephen's, and galvanised the question of womens* suffrage, formerly one of purely academic interest in Great Britain, into a live, burning problem of the hour. Miss Pankhurst has none of the eccentricities of dress or manner which have provided the Eglish newspaper artist with the material for his picture of the Shrieking Sisterhood. She is just a fine-looking, cultured young English woman. But she has all the attributes of a born leader. To hear her address an open-air meeting, an Aucklander who recently visited London says, is to have a revelation in the art of managing a crowd. Her armoury is full of the weapons which equip the successful political orator. She states her case with the greatest lucidity in a finelymodulated, yet quiet, voice. She meets the interruptions of the "heckler" with a ever-flowing fund Jqf humour, and has never been knovyn to lose hvr self control even muter the mo„t L'yin v circumstance. Bat her all-consuming earnestness stands out above everything else. This tall girl, who stands on the waggon i.i Hyde Park, surrounded by a cr iwd of two or three thousand people, for the most part unsympathetic to the cause which she advocates, has made the women's vote the aim and centre of her life. But her enthusiasm never gets out of hand. In spite of all the political turmoil through which she has passed, Christabel Pankhurst remains just as essentially feminine as any girl to be found in the country rectory, and that is, perhaps, the greatest compliment which could be paid her. Her mother, Mrs Pankhurst, is a woman of very great intelligence, but the undoubted leader of the party which has made two British Cabinets uncomfortable is her daughter Christabel. Mrs Flora Drummond suffered a bitter disappointment in her early career. Born at Manchester in 1878, and educated at the Civil Service College in Glasgow, she passed all examinations for postmistress, and then found herself a victim of a new regulation that applicants, for post mistresses should be not Jess than sft 2in in height. Failing to come up to the standard by lin, she found that all' her preparation was of no avail.- So after leading a deputation of women to protest against this injustice, and obtaining no satisfaction, Mrs Drummond became a typist, and developed into an ardent Socialist.