The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 21: The Recent Days (1910-1914)
History
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 21: The Recent Days (1910-1914)
World history
I say, unhesitatingly, that the main obstacle to women getting the vote
is militancy and nothing else. Its practitioners really seem to think
that they can terrorize and pinprick Parliament into giving it to them;
and until they learn something of the people they are dealing with,
their whole agitation, so far as the House of Commons is concerned, is
simply and utterly damned. It is perfectly astonishing to recall with
what diabolical ingenuity they have contrived to infuriate all their
opponents, to alienate all their sympathizers, and to stir up against
themselves every prejudice in the average man's breast. A few years ago
they found three-fourths of the Liberal M.P.'s on their side. They at
once proceeded to cudgel their brains as to how they could possibly
drive them into the enemy's camp. They rightly decided that this could
not be done more effectually than by insulting and assaulting the Prime
Minister, the chief of the Party, and a leader for whom all his
colleagues and followers feel an unbounded admiration, regard, and
affection. When they had thus successfully estranged the majority of
Liberals they began to study the political situation a little more
closely. They saw that the Irish Nationalists were very powerful
factors in the Ministerial Coalition. The next problem, therefore, was
how to destroy the last chance that the Irish Nationalists would
support their cause. They achieved this triumphantly first by making
trouble in Belfast where the only Nationalist member is or was a strong
Suffragist, and secondly by going to Dublin when all Nationalist
Ireland had assembled to welcome Mr. Asquith, throwing a hatchet at Mr.
Redmond, and trying to burn down a theater. That finished Ireland, but
still they were dissatisfied. There was a dangerous movement of
sympathy with their agitation in Wales, and they felt that at any cost
it had to be checked. They not only checked, but demolished, it with
the greatest ease by breaking in upon the proceedings at an Eisteddfod.
Now the Eisteddfod is not only the great national festival of Welsh
poetry and music and eloquence, it is also an oasis of peace amid the
sharp contentions of Welsh life. To bring into it any note of politics
or sectarianism or public controversy, even when these things are
rousing the most passionate emotions outside, seems to a Welshman like
the desecration of an altar. That is just what the militants did, and
Welsh interest in their cause fell dead on the spot. But even then they
were not happy. They were still encumbered by the good-will of perhaps
a hundred Tory M.P.'s. But they proved entirely equal to the task of
antagonizing them. They began smashing windows, burning country
mansions, firing race-stands, damaging golf-greens, striking as hard as
they could at the Tory idol of Property. There is really nothing more
left for them to do; they have alienated every friend they ever had;
their work is complete beyond their wildest hopes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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