The English Suffragettes: Another View.

White Ribbon, Volume 12, Issue 139, 15 December 1906, Page 5

The English Suffragettes: Another View.

There is no doubt that the reports which reach us from time to time concerning the doings of the English Suffragettes ar* exaggerated and misleading in tue extreme. Mrs. I*'rances Swinev, in a private letter, says: “I am fully in accord with their motive and self - sacrificing methods. They have the true spirit of reformers and of martyrs, without which, no great aim is ever reached. To me, nothing shows more the degeneracy of the British race than the scurrilous misrepresentation and the barbarous treatment (italics are ours) these women have had to undergo. Four hundred and forty members of the present Parliament pledged by every gage of honour and honesty to forward Woman Suffrage, and moved neither hand nor foot t<> gain it, but laughed and cheered when women wen* assaulted by the police! 1 am utterly ashamed of my countrymen as representatives in Parliament. Mrs. Ida I lusted Harper, who had just returned from a visit to Knglaud, had an interview with a representative of the Boston “ Woman’s Journal. Mrs. Harper had attended the Suffragettes open air meeting in Hyde Bark. It was quiet and orderly, with an audience of about six hundred, mostly men,and evidently sympathizers. Miss Bankhurst’s speech was the most eloquent she had every heard. The Suffragettes are women of modesty and refinement, yet are ready to go to the stake for their cause. Miss Bank hurst is a pretty girl of about twenty-three years, the daughter of a distinguished physician. Though a graduate in law, she cannot he admitted to the English Bar because she is a woman. Mrs. Harper says the reports of the disorderly behaviour of the women are grossly exaggerated, and that the disorders have been generally due to the brutality of tin* police. For instance, it was reported that Theresa Billington kicked a policeman. Sin* and her followers had started to walk in pp.vesaion around the square before Mr. Asquith s house, which they had a legal right to do. The police forbade them. They persisted. Two policemen then held Miss Billington's arms, while a third seized her by the throat, and choked her till she was black in the

face. Inder the circumstances, naturally, she kicked. Finding that these young women were not to he frightened by ordinary rough handling, the police began to take improper personal liberties with them while putting them out of meetings or taking them to the lock-up, and it was to resist these indignities (after they had become the settled policy of the police) that some of the women armed themselves with hunting whips. According to a despatch from the London Standard, Mrs Alfred Lyttelton declared that the women who stormed the House of ( ominous were perfectly justified. The same message says It i> astonishing to see how much silent sympathy prevails for the eleven women leaders now in prison.’