But the first policy cuts away the whole ground upon which the women’s demand is based; upon this ground not only would men infallibly beat women, but the great mass of women, as well as men, would feel that the militant women had invited defeat. When Mrs. Leigh adjures her women hearers to use their nails upon the eyes of men who attempt to arrest them, does she not know that this could only succeed for as long as the men disbelieved the women’s intentions? As soon as the men apprehended real danger, they could effectively dispose of the women. Even if it were not wrong, it would be futile in the extreme. But it is wrong, inexcusably wrong, on the part of women, whose experience of life ought to have proved to them that for women to invite physical force against themselves is to provoke all the forces of reaction against which their movement is, in reality, directed. Long years ago, men threw stones and filth at women who asked for enfranchisement. Gradually public opinion killed out this hooliganism. Then came the militants, and, by smashing windows and arson and general terrorism, revived the ape in men, so that, for some years past, all women are once more in danger of violence from men. It is degrading to both men and women, and the only merit that I can see in the process is, that men who have so loved to exercise all the virtues vicariously in their women, are being a little shocked to see how ugly violence can be, and, from seeing it ugly in a woman may, by and by, turn to see it ugly in themselves. It is hypocrisy, of course, for men to say that they refuse women’s claims because some women have been violent, firstly, because they refused them just the same, before women became violent; secondly, because only a few women have been violent; thirdly, because the vote was not given to men as a reward for their abstinence from violence. In fact, the brutalities of anti-suffragists might make the more sensitive Antis cease, for very shame, to reproach the other side with violence, their own side having been guilty of personal assaults of the most disgusting nature. Men have not yet given women the vote, partly because they are very slow to move and indifferent about women’s questions; partly because they are still somewhat fearful of what women may do; but chiefly because no political party has yet seen a clear party gain to be made by it. This last, which has been the greatest obstacle to the accomplishment of this reform, will be its great safeguard once it has been won. The women’s vote would be on a precarious tenure if it were won by one party in the teeth of the bitter opposition of the whole of the other party. The peaceful and fruitful use of the vote depends upon a general conversion of the country to the principles involved. Representative institutions can only work well by common consent and goodwill.