THE SUFFRAGETTE RIOTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 14932, 4 March 1912, Page 6

THE SUFFRAGETTE RIOTS.

The inability of -women to take part in the management of Home and Foreign Affairs • has been again demonstrated in London, this time by an extraordinary riot in the leading shopping centre of London, a riot which within a few minutes resulted in the destruction of several thousand pounds worth of property and the arrest of a hundred and twenty-one "martyrs." The passing excuse Of one of the leaders is that the miners had found disturbance so successful that the suffragettes hoped for the same result. Anarchy notoriously becomes epidemic when . once made popular, but it is still hard for colonials to associate women's suffrage with lawlessness and crime. In the colonies, the vote went to women because there did not appear to be any great

reason why it should not—although there were no very overpowering reasons advanced for it; but in the United Kingdom the women themselves appear to be " manufacturing objections to adult suffrage as rapidly as they are able. For instead of being an argument for women's suffrage, wilful and prearranged rioting and lawlessness is, if anything, evidence that they are unfit to be trusted with the ballot. Those who most favour the political equality of the sexes must be most disturbed and grieved at the accu- , mulating proof that women in England are still unfit to be accorded | franchise privileges. .1