THE MILITANT SUFFRAGETTES.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 89, 15 April 1913, Page 8

THE MILITANT SUFFRAGETTES.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —Bigoted opinions, such as those held by your correspondent H. W. Lee, are always difficult to* controvert, simply because they are not argument. His is precisely the attitude taken up by Asquibh and Co., the first syllabus of whose name is apropos. It is this- arbitrary attitude that has led to revolt and the taking up of arms in all ages. Where the appeal to reason fails, resort must> be had to force. Unsympathetic to the claims of women because they do not interest them (and, as they think, do not concern them), the British Government has attempted to ignore the demands; when the women insist on being heard, they endeavour to put them down hy power. That course , has always been adopted by bigots, and the suffragettes —cultured and educated—know it. After forty or fifty years of constitutional knocking at the doors of the deaf, they took a lesson from history. They found that no Tefonrn in any country had ever been won without revolt, that pioneers had everywhere been done to death, that in cases of public weal active warfare had had to be waged before the powers would capitulate. Hence their action, and hence their ultimate triumph. Only this week did we see the forefcst of that triumph, for when 500 American suffragettes invade the Oapitol, formal resolution in favour of the franchise are at once introduced an both Houses of Congress. The American men have learned the lesson from their English cousins. .'■ 'Tutting down reform by force." .It has always been tried when logic fails. Did not Nero try to smother Christianity by .murdering the Christians? Did not the Christians, at a la-ter date, try to stamp out heresy by sword and fire? Have not the pioneers of science and philosophy been butchered and their books, burnt? Did not the French quell the Commune with the guillotine, and docs not the Czar banish the unorthodox to Siberia? Every pioneer of proTess has had to take his life in his hands. Enslaved, beheaded, burnt at .the stake, fined, imprisoned, banished, tortured, all have had to be faced by the saviours of mankind. And Avhile fines, torture, and inrprisonment have been found ineffectual, banishment .is now proposed for the suffragettes. All of .which, says your sballow-bTained correspondent, is coiirted for the-sake of irotorietv! ©id Anaxagoras, rather than • recant 1 his scientific beliefs, allow himself to be brayed alive m a stone mortar for the love of notoriety? Did Christ allow himself to be crucified the martyrs to be tortured, the witches to be boiled and burned to death, for notoriety? Your correspondent, to maintain his" theory, must lo<n►ally take up the position that they d?d —I am, ; ,etc, f, t>„ „' ■• . ' M. CLYDE. Ponsonby, April 12, If+l3.