Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/745

WOMEN S MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED KINGDOM 729 only adopted sensational and unusual methods, such as waving flags and making speeches in the lobby of the House and asking inconvenient questions at public meetings. They had suffered a great deal of violence but had used none. From 1908 onwards, however, they began to use violence, stone throwing, personal attacks, sometimes with whips, on obnoxious members of the Government, window smashing, the destruction of the contents of letter-boxes in one instance the destruction of ballot papers cast in an election. Later arson practised for the destruction or attempted destruction of churches and houses became more and more frequent. All this had an intensely irritating effect on public opinion. "Suffragist" as far as the general public was concerned became almost synonymous with "Harpy." This cause which had not been defeated on a straight vote in the House of Commons since 1886 was now twice defeated; once in 1912 and once in 1913. The whole spirit engendered by attempt- ing to gain by violence or threats of violence what was not con- ceded to justice and reason was intensely inimical to the spirit of our movement. We believed with profound conviction that whatever might be gained in that way did not and could not rest on a sure foundation. The women's movement was an appeal against government by physical force and those who used phys- ical violence in order to promote it were denying their faith to make their faith prevail. The difference made a deep rift in the suffrage movement. The constitutional societies felt bound to exclude "militants" fn>m their membership and on several occasions issued strongly- Vd protests against the use of violence as political propa- ganda. The fact that men under similar circumstances had been much more violent and destructive, especially in earlier days when they were less civilized, did not inspire us with the wish to imitate them. Ve considered that they had been wrong and that "direct action," as it is now the fashion to call coercion by means of physical force, had always reacted unfavorably on those who employed it. While the constitutional societies freely and iterlly expressed their views on these points, the "militants" not unnaturally retorted by attempting to break up our meetings, shouting down our speakers and provoking every sort of disorder