methods, such as waving flags and making
speeches in the lobby of the House and asking inconvenient questions
at public meetings. They had suffered a great deal of violence but had
used none. From 1908 onwards, however, they began to use violence,
stone throwing, personal attacks, sometimes with whips, on obnoxious
members of the Government, window smashing, the destruction of the
contents of letter-boxes--in one instance the destruction of ballot
papers cast in an election. Later arson practised for the destruction
or attempted destruction of churches and houses became more and more
frequent. All this had an intensely irritating effect on public
opinion. "Suffragist" as far as the general public was concerned
became almost synonymous with "Harpy." This cause which had not been
defeated on a straight vote in the House of Commons since 1886 was now
twice defeated; once in 1912 and once in 1913. The whole spirit
engendered by attempting to gain by violence or threats of violence
what was not conceded to justice and reason was intensely inimical to
the spirit of our movement. We believed with profound conviction that
whatever might be gained in that way did not and could not rest on a
sure foundation. The women's movement was an appeal against government
by physical force and those who used physical violence in order to
promote it were denying their faith to make their faith prevail.

The difference made a deep rift in the suffrage movement. The
constitutional societies felt bound to exclude "militants" from their
membership and on several occasions issued strongly-worded protests
against the use of violence as political propaganda. The fact that men
under similar circumstances had been much more violent and
destructive, especially in earlier days when they were less civilized,
did not inspire us with the wish to imitate them. We considered that
they had been wrong and that "direct action," as it is now the fashion
to call coercion by means of physical force, had always reacted
unfavorably on those who employed it. While the constitutional
societies freely and repeatedly expressed their views on these points,
the "militants" not unnaturally retorted by attempting to break up our
meetings, shouting down our speakers and provoking every sort of
disorder at them. It was an exceptionally difficult situation and
that we won through as well as we did was due to the solid loyalty to
constitutional and law-abiding methods of prop