rnoon when the four hundred
and fifty women began their movement towards Parliament Square. A
red sun was sinking behind the House of Lords, the blue of the misty
buildings and street openings was enhanced by the lemon yellow
lights of the newly-lit lamps. The avenues converging on the Houses
of Parliament were choked with people, and vehicles had to be
diverted from the streets. The men in the watching crowd covered the
pavements and island "refuges," leaving the roadways to the little
groups of struggling women, and the large force--a thousand or
more--of opposing police.

It was said at the time that the Government of the day, realizing by
their action or inaction in the House of Commons they had provoked
this movement of Mrs. Pankhurst's, had prepared the policy with
which to meet it. As on the eve of a General Election it might be
awkward if they made many arrests of women--perchance Liberal
women--on their way to the House to present a petition or escort a
deputation, the police should be instructed instead to repel the
Suffragists by force, to give them a taste of that "frightfulness"
which became afterwards so familiar a weapon in the Prussian
armoury. Some said also that the Government looked to the crowd
which was allowed to form unchecked on the pavements, the crowd of
rough men and boys--costers from Lambeth, longshore men from the
barges on the unembanked Westminster riverside, errand boys,
soldiers, sailors, clerks returning home, warehousemen, the tag-rag
and bob-tail generally of London when a row is brewing--looked to
this crowd to catch fire from the brutality of the police
(uniformed and in plain clothes) and really give the women
clamouring for the Vote "what for"; teach them a lesson as to what
the roused male can do when the female passes the limits of domestic
license. A few deaths might result (and did), and many injuries, but
the treatment they received would make such an impression on Mrs.
Pankhurst's followers that they would at last realize the futility
of measuring their puny force against the muscle of man. Force, as
the Premier had just said, must be the decisive factor.

But unfortunately for these calculations the large male crowd took
quite a different line. The day had gone by when men and boys were
wont to cry to some expounding Suffragette: "Go home and mind yer
biby." Dimly these toilers and moilers, these loafers and wasters
now understood that women of a courage rarely matched