MRS PANKHURST.

Evening Star, Issue 19894, 16 June 1928, Page 6

MRS PANKHURST.

Thk cause of Mrs Emmeliuo Pankhurst when she fought for woman’s suffrage was much better than her methods. Wo should be back to barbarism if every public object desired by some and doubted by others were contended for in her manner by tooth and claw. By tying themselves to grilles and burning down golfhouses the suffragettes who clamoured for votes for women did their best to prove their unfitness for them. The sacrifices which they made, however, did have the effect of putting new life into what had become very much of a somnolent cause, and to most of the Amazons, including their leader, the credit must be given that they knew when to leave off In a great national emergency the claims of patriotism were recognised by them as even more important than woman’s franchise, and the eervioes given by,

women evoked tho admiration of the nation. Before the war ended the first great instalment of the reform which they had sought was conceded to them without further asking, as an act alike of gratitude and of justice. The millennium did not follow. Grown wiser, older, Mrs Pankhurst was led to revise some of her views of how the world is to be reformed. In a revealing statement nearly ten years later she said; “ We thought a miracle was going to happen. All reformers tMnk that. Wo thought that votes were going to bring Utopia, but that left human nature out of the question. Still, women have the vote, and the rest is for them.” It was a lesson which one or two of her daughters, clinging still to methods of violence, were unable to learn so soon, and which only their own experience will teach other perfervid reformers. The kingdom of heaven is not to bo taken by storm or accomplished by any single vote which a majority may be prevailed on to pass. In a few. days all women in Great Britain will have the right to vote. And they will vote just about as wisely and just about as foolishly as men. The “ ascension of our time ” will still bo a slow effort, calling more for character in tho mass than for dramatic strokes.