The Militant Suffragettes
By Editor
It seems clear to us that the English authorities are justified in the three years' sentence of penal servitude imposed upon Mrs. Pankhurst. She deserves it all, and more. The scene at the trial was unprecedented in the Old Bailey. It recalls the trial of the Camorra of Italy. The women are said to have yelled and screeched and shouted, and in fact, it seemed to have been bedlam let loose for a while. After her sentence, Mrs. Pankhurst told the judge, Sir Charles Montagu Lush, “I deliberately break the law,—not hysterically, not emotionally, but for a set and serious purpose, because I believe it is the only way.” And yet Mrs. Pankhurst might have seen that all over the English-speaking world women have secured and are securing the power to vote without resorting to any of the means which she and her followers have indulged in. It has been suggested that the militant suffragettes be deported to some English colony where there is equal suffrage, or be placed in some walled town or territory on some of the old feudal estates of England, and left to themselves. But that would not suit them, of course. They would be at war among themselves, and something else would take the place of their present hobby. As it is, they are a constant menace to life and property, public and private, and ought to be confined either in a madhouse or in a penitentiary. It was said that at the time of the trial one of the suffragettes declared that it would not be mere property now, but life would be in danger. Just recently in Plymouth telephone and telegraph wires have been cut, unoccupied houses have been fired, and now they declare that occupied houses will be. Manchester Art Gallery has recently been visited and the glasses on thirteen paintings smashed, some of them religious and noted paintings. These militant suffragettes certainly are a disgrace to the entire noble womanhood of England, and are retarding everything that is good in their own cause by the course which they have pursued. In the beginning they seemed to have the sympathy of the throngs which gathered around them, but now even the mob itself has turned against them. As before remarked, they deserve all that they are receiving, and more.