THE SUFFRAGETTES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 16, 19 June 1913, Page 5

THE SUFFRAGETTES.

A VANDALISTIC OUTRAGE. ! By Cable —Press Association—Copyright. i London, June 17. ! Three hundred valuable books in the library of St. John's Cambridge, have been slashed with a knife. A card, on which was written "Votes for Women," was found near them. SENTENCES FOR CONSPIRACY. London, June 17. All the suffragettes charged with conspiracy have been sentenced in the third division. Miss Lake and Lilian Lennox each received six months' imprisonment, Miss Barrett nine months', Miss Kerr twelve months', Miss Sanders fifteen, Anny Kenny eighteen, and Clayton (the analyst) 21 months'. Each*has been ordered to pay one-seventh of the cu-ts of prosecution. MRS. KENNY'S TRIAL. A MISGUIDED WOMAN. PREPARED TO DIE. Received 10, 12.30 a.m. London, June 18. Mrs. Kenny, addressing the jury, referred to the Ulster discovery of rifles, and added that had women said that "rifles for women; women will fight with rifles," the Government would have been justified in prosecuting {hem. She would rebel until the Government gave he? a vote. She would rebel against an abominable system—economic, industrial .and political—under which women lived. If, like Miss Davison, she must die to get a vote, she would do so, whatever the verdict. The Solicitor-General replied that defendants were prosecuted not for their opinions, but for flagrant breaches of the criminal law in pursuit of objects perfectly legitimate in themselves. Justice Phillimore, summing up, said that this wa3 one of the saddest trials in his experience. It had been urged that great causes were never won without breaking the law. Possibly this was true in some cases, but it was very untrue in others, and if every recorded act of anarchy was used to justify further acts of anarchy the human race would soon reach a position of absolute savagery. The case had been treated as a case of one sex against the other. He imagined that the jury would find that it was not women against men, but some women against all other women and children, and some men against all other men. The jury were fifty-seven minutes absent. Mr. Justice Phillmore, in passing sentence, said that he believed that some suffragists were actuated partly by ambition and pride and love of power, and others, young people chiefly, from a spirit of mischief. Others made'it a matter of pay. Many had a sincere belief that they were forwarding a good object. MRS. PANKHURST'S CONDITION. Received 18, 11.35 p.m. London, June 18. Mrs. Pankhurst's condition is critical.