firesides at least give them admiration and encouragement. "Qui veut la fin, veut les moyens." And undoubtedly the means are not the most ladylike. Ladylike means are all very well if you are dealing with gentlemen; but you are dealing with politicians.... In politics only force counts, but how is a discredited minority to exercise force?... There is a little loophole. Every now and then the party in power has to venture outside its citadel to contest a by-election. The ladies are waiting. The constituency becomes the arena of battle, and every Government candidate, whether he is for female suffrage or not, is opposed tooth and nail. For every Government--Liberal or Conservative--that refuses to grant Female Suffrage is ipso facto the enemy. The cause is to be greater than mere party. Damage the Government--that is the whole secret. Are these tactics sound? In my opinion, absolutely so. They are not only ladylike, they are constitutional. They are the only legitimate way in which woman can bring direct political pressure upon the Government.... Far better than to put yourself in prison is to keep a man out of Parliament.... What Christianity cannot do, what charity cannot do, what all the thunder of your Carlyles and your Ruskins cannot do, a simple vote does. And so to these myriads of tired women who rise in the raw dawn and troop to their cheerless factories, and who, when the twilight falls, return not to rest but to the labours of a squalid household, to these the thought of Women's Suffrage, which comes as a sneer to the man about town, comes as a hope and a prayer. Who dares leave that hope unillumined, that prayer unanswered?... For fifty years now woman has stood crying: "I stand for justice--answer, shall I have it?" And the answer has been a mocking "no" or a still more mocking "yes." With this flabby friendliness, this policy of endless evasion. To-day she cries: "I _fight_ for justice and I answer that I _shall_ have it." FOOTNOTES: [18] Speaking at Leicester on January 30th, the Home Secretary, Mr. Herbert Gladstone, was proceeding to extoll the promptitude and care with which, he asserted, the Home Office inquired into alleged cases of miscarriage of justice, when he was interrupted by cries of protest from Annie Kenney and a band of other Suffragettes. Whilst they were being speedily ejected, Mr. Gladstone tried to curry favour with the audience by saying that he particularly regretted what had taken place because his action in regard to the Suffragettes had been to reduce the sentences passed upon them and to ameliorate their prison treatment. As we have seen the change was only made in response to an unmistakable public demand, and after Mr. Gladstone had begun by saying he had no power to effect it. [19] A cultured literary woman, who, with her husband, had recently published two anthologies of music. CHAPTER VIII