LONDON GOSSIP.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 6, 7 January 1908, Page 4

LONDON GOSSIP.

(From Oar Special Correspondent.) LONDON, November 22. WOMAN'S FIGHT FOR FREEDOM. The women who are fighting for the franchise in England have been making things lively for the Liberal Government and also for themselves. It is part of "their policy to 4i heckle " every Cabinet Minister who addresses a political meeting because they consider that the Cabinet has played . them false in this matter of the female franchise. In pursuance of this policy, carried out with no little courage in the face of strong and sometimes violent opposition, the Suffragettes have done their best to break up the meetings addressed recently by Mr. Buxton. Mr. L. Harcourt (twice), Mr. McKenna, Mr. JBirrellj and Mr. Asquith. They have succeeded in making themselves a terror to Cabinet Ministers, who never address a meeting now without first en-; gaging a small army of sturdy bullies to protect them from the women! To such straits are the champions of the " womanly " woman reduced, and such 13 their much-vaunted chivalry when their own patriarchal authority and dominion are disputed. TBe defence of Mr. Asquith at Nuneaton last Saturday was as brutal as it was ineffective. Something like a hundred burly miners had been enrolled as " stewards " in anticipation of interruptions on the part of the Suffragettes, and as soon as any woman in the audience opened her mouth to addrese the chair she was seized by two or three stewards and roughly bundled out. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had scarcely began his speech before the first interruption came. " I protest against the Government," a lady in the drese circle Shouted, and immediately the stewards removed her. Another protest followed almost at once. " Give women the vote," an undaunted suffragette shouted. "Chuck her out!" came in response from all over the house, and amidst great excitement she was pounced upon by the stewards, and joined her sister outside. This was bat the prelude to what was to come. Mr. Asquith had only had a brief period of quietness when, as if by a pre-ar-ranged signal, several suffragettes rose together, and hurled denunciation alter denunciation at the speaker and at the Government. Again the stewards rushed at the interrupters, and with a show o{ brute force which aroused the indignation of some of the men present, who shouted from the gallery, "Oh, you pigs, You cowards, you brutes! " hustled the women out of the theatre. For a niinate or so there was a lull, and then from all over the building women rose from their seats, shouting, " The women of England want justice; we want votes! " The scene was one of intense excitement, and it eeemed as if the meeting would have to be brongbt to an untimely end. The tumult was deafening, and the audience took sides. Half-a-dozen women, shrieking and fighting, succumbed •too the overpowering number 5 of the stewards, and shared the fate of previous interrupters. But their departure in no way interfered with the progress of interruptions. Men now joined in the disturbance, and objecting to the seemingly rough way in which the suffragettes were handled, shouted " What about Featherstone? " Through all the din and confusion Mr. Asquith stood surveying the scene with unmoved couni tenanec. Again and again the suiirai gettes sought to break up the meeting, ! but the stewards, puffing with their exertion's, made' short work of them and, carrying them by their shoulders and feet, bundled them out of the doors. Right to the end o.f his speech Mr. Asquith met with continued opposition, I while the speakers who followed met j with still less ceremony. Evictions continued until by the time the meeting was over no fewer than 30 suffragettes, fighting to the lest, had been deposited in the street. They had been very roughly handled, but they had succeeded in their object, for what little Mr. Asquith was able to say was not worth listening to. Undergraduates hove been "distinguishing " themselves as well as Cabinet Ministers. At Leeds the students broke up a suffragette meeting by the chivalrous and daring plan of sprinkling the audience with cayenne pepper; and at Birmingham on Wednesday night the students invaded the gallery at a suffrage tie meeting and drowned the speakers with snatches of comic songs, cat-calls, belis, mouth-organs, squeakers, rattles, whistles and a cornet. It is often urged against the suffragettes that their conduel in interrupting public meetings shows "that women are unfit to have the vote. It is a verj shallow argument; but even supposing it were sound, then by the same reasoning the conduct of these precious undergraduates indicates that men are doubly unfit to have the , vote. For the women in their most exj travagant demonstrations have never dei scended to the use of cayenne, pepper, sulphuretted hydrogen, cat-calls and cor- | nets. How is it, I wonder, that Uni--1 versity undergraduates in this country, unlike fhoee in most European countries, are always on the side of reaction, and opposed to every forward movement? They are supposed to be the cream of England's youthful intellect and culture, But in their political and social ideas they always seem to be about half a century behind the times.