The militant suffragists, like the Labour members, had used the action of the Ulstermen and the officers as an argument for their own militancy; but their acts, while far exceeding anything yet attempted on the part of Ulster, were vexatious, but hardly formidable. Still, the perpetrators frequently escaped discovery; punishment was no deterrent; and imprisonment was speedily ended by hunger and thirst strikes, entailing temporary discharge under the "Cat and Mouse" Act. Miss Sylvia Pankhurst and her mother, thus released, were rearrested on their way respectively to demonstrations in Trafalgar Square (March 8) and St. Andrew's Hall, Glasgow (March 9); rioting followed and both were released after fresh hunger-strikes on March 15. Meanwhile Miss Mary Richardson had damaged with a chopper the Rokeby Velasquez in the National Gallery (bought by subscription in 1906), in order, as she explained, to protest against the treatment of the most beautiful character in modern history--Mrs. Pankhurst--by destroying the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythology; but her sentence of six months' imprisonment was soon suspended by a hunger-strike. A month later (April 9) a woman smashed a case in the British Museum containing porcelain, but did little damage. A charity performance attended by the King and Queen at the Palladium was interrupted (March 17); an attempt to carry Miss Sylvia Pankhurst into Westminster Abbey (March 22) was unsuccessful, but a clergyman conducted a suffragist service outside. A woman clumsily disguised as a man awaited the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary in the Commons lobby with a riding whip, but was detected and sentenced to six weeks' imprisonment (March 16, 17); and a discussion in the Poplar Borough Council whether its halls should be let to suffragists (March 26) was broken up by militants in the Council and the audience. A graver outrage was a bomb explosion at St. John the Evangelist's Church, Westminster (March 1), after evening service; a stained glass window was shattered. Damage was done a week later in Birmingham Cathedral; the interior was daubed with white paint, suffragist mottoes were displayed, and a stained glass, window injured. Attempts were made to fire churches at Clevedon (March 21) and Glasgow (March 28), and an unoccupied house at Stewarton, Ayrshire (March 12), in revenge for Mrs. Pankhurst's rearrest; and, when Sir Edward Carson, after some days' picketing of his house, had refused to press women's enfranchisement under his Provisional Government, a house belonging to General McCalmont at Abbeylands, near Belfast, was burnt likewise. Though all this estranged the general public, militancy found ardent and devoted support among both sexes, and the receipts of the Women's Social and Political Union, for the year ending with February, 1914, amounted to nearly 37,000_l._, apart from some thousands raised independently by local branches. Mrs. Pankhurst's American tour in 1913