404 



Books of the Month, 



THE FAIR SEX: PSYCHICAL AND POLITICAL. 



WOMEN who have long been content to fill the 

 cradles of the world are now, as a variation, 

 filling the gaols of London as a means of filling 

 the electoral register in the future with female voters, 

 who will fill the ballot-boxes with the votes of women. 

 Finding that their claims for the vote were not taken 

 seriously — in the first session of Campbell-Bannerman'a 

 Parliament their one opportunity for a debate in Parlia- 

 ment was sacrificed to a Miners' Check Weighman's Bill 

 — they were driven to adopt the policy of making them- 

 selves a nuisance. They made the way of the trans- 

 gressors hard, and at last convinced Ministers that the 

 line of least resistance did not pass over the woman's 

 cause. In the earlier stages of the struggle the militant 

 policy commanded the respect and admiration even of 

 those against whom it was primarily directed. The 

 women displayed an enthusiasm, a zeal and spirit of 



desert them. It was not enough that the Government 

 should afford them facilities in the House of Commons 

 to enfranchise women by an amendment to the 

 Manhood Suffrage Bill ; nothing would satisfy them 

 but that a Cabinet admittedly divided on the ques- 

 tion must commit suicide in order that the larger 

 half of it should at once bring in a Woman's Suffrage 

 Bill as a Government measure. As the Cabinet natur- 

 ally refused to commit suicide, and as nine-tenths of 

 all the suffragists in the House of Commons objected 

 to sacrifice the Liberal Administration to what was, 

 after all, a mere detail of parliamentary procedure, 

 the leaders of the Woman's Social and Political 

 Union lost their heads, and adopted a policy which 

 has landed them in gaol on a charge of criminal con- 

 spiracy. Whether they lost their heads or not they 

 certainly lost patience, and by way of expressing their 



rhoti'graph /.; I \Bassann, 1.1,1. 



The Alleged Conspirators. 



(i) Mr. Petliick Lawrence; (2) Mr^. Lawrence; (3) Miss Cluistabel Pankliiirst (who is "wanted"); (4) Mrs. Pankliurst. 



self-sacrificing martyrdom which restored a heroic 

 strain to our political life. At last they succeeded in 

 bringing their demand for enfranchisement within the 

 pale of practical politics. They compelled their oppo- 

 nents to found an Anti-Suffrage Society, which was in 

 turn compelled to resort to women to demonstrate on 

 the platform that women have no business on plat- 

 forms. They compelled a Prime Minister — who had 

 declared that he regarded their emancipation as a 

 danger and a disaster to the State — to pledge himself 

 to adopt their Bill as a Government measure if a 

 House of ('ommons, in which suffragists were in 

 a large majority, carried an amendment enfran- 

 chising women. They converted a majority of the 

 Cabinet to woman's suffrage, and all was going swim- 

 minglv when, at the eleventh hour, the good genius 

 which li.'is hitherto directed their campaign seemed to 



impatience they resorted to the familiar tactics of the 

 spoiled child in the nursery when it is not immediately 

 supplied with everything it wants. They smashed 

 things. They began with the plate-glass windows of 

 the West Pmd shops, and they threatened to smash 

 other things with such sinister emphasis that the 

 authorities deemed it a necessary act of precaution to 

 exclude everyone in petticoats from the British Museum 

 and the National Gallery. Because they had won all 

 along the line by making themselves a nuisance that 

 must be abated they conceived the idea that the\- 

 had only to make themselves an intolerable nuisance 

 to achieve a final victory. 



The result has been to make a great many people 

 of both sexes wonder whether, after all, they were 

 right in thinking that women were capable of acting 

 as rational beings when confronted with the serious 



