ed from those who could see no practical
policy to win the Vote but a regime of Terrorism--mild terrorism, it
is true--somewhat that of the Curate in _The Private Secretary_ who
at last told his persecutors he should _really have to give them a
good hard knock_. The Peths drew back before the Pankish programme
(mild as this would seem, to us of Bolshevik days and of Irish
insurrection). _Votes for Women_ returned to the control of the
Pethick Lawrences, and the Pankhurst party to which Vivie belonged
were to start a new press organ, _The Suffragette_.

The Panks, it seemed, had a more acute fore-knowledge than the
Peths. The latter had felt they were forcing an open door; that the
Liberal Ministry would eventually squeeze a measure of Female
Suffrage into the long-discussed Franchise Bill; and that too much
militancy was disgusting the general public with the Woman's cause.
The former declared all along that Women were going to be done in
the eye, because all the militancy hitherto had got very little in
man's way, had only excited smiles, and shoulder-shrugs. Ministers
of the Crown in 1912 had compared the hoydenish booby-traps and
bloodless skirmishes of the Suffragettes with the grim fighting, the
murders, burnings, mob-rule of the 1830's, when MEN were agitating
for Reform; or the mutilation of cattle, the assassinations,
dynamite outrages, gun-powder plots, bombs and boycotting of the
long drawn-out Irish agitation for Home Rule. An agitation which was
now resulting in the placing on the Statute Book of a Home Rule
Bill, while another equally deadly agitation--in promise--was being
worked up by Sir Edward Carson, the Duke of This and the Marquis of
That, and a very rising politician, Mr. F.E. Smith, to defeat the
operation of Home Rule for Ireland. In short, if one might believe
the second-rate ministers who were not repudiated by their superiors
in rank, the Vote for Women could only be wrung from the reluctance
of the tyrant man, _if_ the women made life unbearable for the male
section of the community.

It was a dangerous suggestion to make, or would have proved so, had
these sneering politicians been provoking men to claim their
constitutional rights: bloodshed would almost certainly have
followed. But the leaders of the militant women ordered (and were
obeyed) that no attacks on life should be part of the Woman's
militant programme. Property might be destroyed, especially such as
did not impoverish the poor