THE TREATMENT OF SUFFRAGETTES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10019, 15 April 1910, Page 4

THE TREATMENT OF SUFFRAGETTES.

The following extract from a private Home letter sheds a little more light on the situation touching die law and the suffragette. The writer is a New Zealand lady in touch with the movement, though opposed to the militant policy of the Women'a Social and Political Union: "But their policy," she says, does not in the least excuse the injustice and ferocious cruelty with which they hve been treated at political meetings, in the streets and in prison. So far from there baing any exaggeration in the accounts I know from personal friends, members of the two great militant leagues, that not the half of what has been done has ever been made public. The Min- [ isters by their attitude and speeces encourage the most brutal passions of the mob and lower class officials. Young girls and married ladies have been struck on the breast, mauled, dragged violently over seats, and Jitrally flung into the streets, stunned, and struck while they were unconscious, and this has been done by supporters of the Government, and with at least the tacit'approval of Cabinet Ministers, one of whom, as you will see, told the Liberal stewards to "fling the women ruthlessly t out'' for trying to break up his meeting, although during the election men have repeatedly broken up political meetings, and no Minister has thought of punishing them. For the treatment of prisoners the Go\ eminent .is still more responsible. While refusing to treat their opponents as political prisoners in the way of giantirjg any privileges, they have nevertheless treated them as political offenders in interfering unconstitutionally wsth their sentences, and j with their treatment while in prison, ' have given them far longer sentences , than they would have had if in tiuth I they had a been ordinary criminals,fund j have encouraged the ignorant and i low class prison officials to actions ! that deserve the name of atiocitiesi