to the attempts upon the House of Commons generally fail to do justice to the utility of any kind of surprise in helping to open the eyes of the public. To borrow a military phrase, they are valuable to begin with as shock tactics. It has been said many times, but it will have to be said many times more, that John Bull will not begin to pay attention until you stand on your head to talk to him. Nobody likes doing it, but it has to be done somehow. It will disgust sober, decorous people; they will probably say that the fact that you can behave so proves that there is less in your arguments than they thought there was; you will alienate friends. It does not matter two straws. There is not the smallest doubt that thousands of people in England have now begun to consider Women's Suffrage seriously who would never have heard of it but for the militant Suffragists who deliberately faced imprisonment, and, what was worse, the pillory provided by newspapers on the look-out for sensations. As a mere matter of tactics, the women who went to Holloway scored a triumphant success.
But it would be a great mistake to attribute all or even any considerable part of the Westminster demonstrations to deliberate tactics. They were valuable to begin with because they compelled attention; but if that were all, there would be something in the attitude of the superior person who says that it is time they were abandoned, that they are now only silly and mischievous. Those who take that view simply ignore the fact which made
