SUFFRAGISTS AND THE LAW

Taranaki Herald, Volume LX, Issue 143765, 13 April 1912, Page 4

SUFFRAGISTS AND THE LAW

T&e London Times is never - intentionally amusing, nut us absolute solemnity sometimes produces ail tne eiiect 01 humour. The following, irom a leader on the day loiiowing uie recent women’s surnage riots in London, is a nnc example oi tne stylo oi the paper. It. lemincis one oi .Uacauiay s History. Mrs. Pankiiurst and her maenads have produced their answer to Nn eonesda\ s great meeting at the Aluert Hall.* It takes the now stereotyped lorm of broken glass, but on what must be regarded, we suppose, as a particularly convincing scaie, since the damage amounts to some thousands ox pounds. The Prime Minister's windows are, as usual, in the list, but the assault has apparently extended to most of the plate glass in Kegent Street, Piccadilly, tne ilaymarxet and the Strand. A one or its, previous lollies has been so .thoroughly calculated to discredit the* suffragist cause. We have been prepared tor news of this description irom China, where an ancient system is in the melting-pot and ail the ordinary functions ot Government are in suspense; wc may even have feared to hear it from bouth Wales, where the elemental forces of society arc tor the moment dangerously stirred; but no one surely can have imagined destruction on ibis scale in London as the work of a few unbalanced women, whose only grievance lies in an insignificant point of Parliamentary procedure affecting *a measure they have at heart. For, whatever may be thought of the suffragist agitation, its immediate grievance is simply infantile. Until recently its militant section have at least been able to urge that only violent methods would secure from Parliament the immediate facilities they desired. But now n ( ot even that excuse remains. Burdened as Parliament already is with with a programme of business such as no previous Parliament has ever been asked to face, the suffragists have secured a promise that their measure shall be debated and added, if a majority supports it, to a first-class Government Bill. That concession is already much in advance of theft deserts, since not a particle of evidence have they yet adduced to show that any sufficient portion of the electorate, or of their own sex, supports their demands. But deserved or not, the concession has been made, and they arc left with only this . complaint—that thc : clause they arc set on is not to be moved in the first place from the Treasury Bench.