Monthly Archives: November 1911

What can Militant Methods Achieve?

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November 29, 1911, To the Editor of The Manchester Guardian, “What can Militant Methods Achieve?”

Davison’s letter laying out a clear exposition of the strategy of the WSPU in the aftermath of the Liberal Government’s withdrawal of support for a Woman Suffrage Bill unabashedly embraces the kind of militant assaults on property that characterized the WSPU march the night of November 21, 1911, when it entered on a campaign of window smashing. Davison asserts that women are determined, strong, and ready to endure a great deal to achieve their goal. The editor of the Guardian has a decidedly different opinion, calling Davison’s explanation a description of a “crazy scheme.”

Sir, –One of your leaders to-day has the title, ‘What can militant methods achieve?’ in which you criticise Miss Pankhurst’s clear exposition of the W.S.P.U. position in this matter as ‘either frivolous…or it assumes that the militants can by such methods bring about the end they desire, that is, the capitulation of the Government.’ You then challenge a clear explanation of the methods, and assert that ‘till someone does explain it, or at least try to, it is to be assumed that the question is found not convenient or not possible to be answered.’

With your permission I gladly take up the challenge. First of all, may I quote Mr. McKenna’s words as reported in your issue of last Saturday to a W.S.P.U. deputation? Miss Barrett asked the question—‘Then you are one of the Cabinet Ministers who would resign if this was made a Cabinet measure?’ Mr. McKenna replied, ‘It never will be. As far as I am concerned I stand in exactly the same position as the Prime Minister,’ etc.

Now that statement made it clear that the Cabinet is resolved not to make women’s suffrage a Government measure. We are resolved that it shall. You ask me to say how. By the most strenuous militancy up and down the country, of which November 21 is but a small earnest, until a general feeling of insecurity is aroused. You will perhaps say that women cannot do this. May I remind you that even an anti-suffragist, Mr. Rudyard Kipling, has recently written that ‘the female of the species is more deadly than the male.’ You yourselves always have recognized in our ranks the spirit which is ready to endure all things. That is the secret of militancy by means of which it must inevitably win. Nothing can stand against it! Yours, &c.,

EMILY WILDING DAVISON
31 Coram-street, London, W.C.,
November 27, 1911

[The really ludicrous position is that Mr. Lloyd George is fighting to enfranchise seven million women and the militants are smashing un-offending people’s windows and breaking up benevolent societies’ meetings in a desperate effort to prevent him. To compare that with any great popular uprising of the past is too absurd a plea to require confutation.—Ed. ‘GUARD’]

Man-Made Law

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November 28, 1911, To the Editor of The Standard, “Man-Made Law”

In this letter Davison engages the state of British law as it applies to women’s rights as wives and mothers. In response to R.W.E.’s contention that legislation has given women rights that they had never had in Britain, Davison points out that the rights women can exercise in marriage are largely the result of hard campaigns led by women, pointing out the sex prejudice embedded in the laws of Britain even in 1911—that a man will be more lightly sentenced for severely beating his wife, than for committing a theft.

Sir, –Your correspondent R.W.E. brings forward as a proof that ‘man-made law’ is not so bad as it is painted by suffragists various proofs that women nowadays are almost privileged under the law. He quotes the fact that mothers may be given the custody of children, and also the fact that nowadays a woman has the right to leave her husband. Will you allow me to point out that these features of the English law on marriage are due (a) to the scandalous state of affairs which obtained in olden days, when the wife was in the eyes of the law exclusively the chattel of her husband; (b) to the noble and tireless labours of devoted women? That this is so is well proved by the way in which the two main laws which give women certain rights as to the guardianship of children were put on the Statute book in 1839 and 1886. The former is due to the life-long work and martyrdom of the Hon. Mrs. Norton, who made a gallant attempt to get the custody of her children from her worthless husband. The other, the Act of 1886, is due to the splendid efforts of Mrs. Wolstenholme Elmy, by which the mother has the right of joint guardianship with any guardian appointed by the father. This same noble pioneer was also one of the main spirits who obtained the epoch-making Married Women’s Property Act, which enacted that women could own separate property. These two acts of elementary justice were only won by herculean effort and suffering by brave women. But the great mass of the injustice of the marriage law still remains, which allows the law to give a man a smaller penalty for nearly killing his wife than for committing a theft.

EMILY WILDING DAVISON
31, Coram-street, W.C.

Businesslike Suffragettes

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November 27, 1911, To the Editor of The Yorkshire Telegraph, “Businesslike Suffragettes”

A happy, if uncharacteristic, note of approbation is the theme of this letter to the Yorkshire Telegraph which had publicly proclaimed the “business capacity” of Suffragettes. As the letter develops it reveals Davison’s frustration with the cultural stereotypes of women as illogica and hysterical—an adjective that Davison particularly deprecates for the ancient sexist prejudice it conveys.

31 Coram Street, W.C.
Nov. 24, 1911

Sir, –The paragraph in your issue of November 23rd, headed ‘Business-like Suffragettes,’ testifies to the business capacity of Suffragettes. Now this is an especially valuable testimony, for one of the favourite allegations of anti-Suffragists is that women may not have a vote because women have no capacity for business. Put to the test, this is proved to be as great a fallacy as are any of the other fictions of ‘lordly males’ as to the want of logic, or the hysteria, or the incapacity of women. They entirely ignore the fact that if women have sometimes deserved these accusations it has been entirely due to men themselves, who have placed in the minds of women, whom they have kept in subjection, and whose morale has been consequently sapped, the powerful suggestions that these are their proper attributes.

But now that women are breaking their bonds and learning to think and act for themselves these fallacies are being steadily disproved, as in your own fair and impartial testimony—Yours, etc.,

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

Woman Suffrage

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November 27, 1911, To the Editor of The Yorkshire Observer, “Woman Suffrage”

The editors of The Yorkshire Observer and The Manchester Guardian begin to append their own statements to Davison’s letters with increasing regularity. Here the issue is the contentious topic of militancy, and its success or lack of success in furthering the suffrage cause. The editorial position of The Yorkshire Observer doubts the value of militancy. Davison, a particularly energetic militant, believed in its strategic utility. The activities of November 21, 1911, which both the editor and Davison refer to are described by Andrew Rosen in Rise Up, Women! this way:
“On 21 November [1911], Mrs Pethick-Lawrence led the usual deputation from the Caxton Hall to Parliament Square. The women who met at 7 p.m. at 156 Charing Cross Road did not march with the deputation. Instead, armed with bags of stones and hammers supplied to them at the WSPU shop, the women went singly to break windows at Government offices and business premises. Windows were smashed at the Home Office, Local Government Board, Treasury, Scottish Educational Office, Somerset House, National Liberal Federation, Guards’ Club, two hotels, the Daily Mail and Daily News, Swan and Edgar’s, Lyon’s, and Dunn’s Hat Shop, as well as at a chemist’s, a tailor’s, a bakery, and other small businesses. Two hundred and twenty women and three men were arrested. The WSPU had never before attacked premises connected with neither the Government nor the Liberal Party. (p. 154; ; from “What Did the Suffragettes Do?” online http://www.johndclare.net/Women1_SuffragetteActions_Rosen.htm)

Sir, –In the leading article in your issue of November 21 on ‘The Violent Suffragists’ you speak of the scenes threatened for that date as some which would degenerate into ‘an orgie of brute force.’ Will you allow me to point out that your prophecy has not been fulfilled? The police, for example, having particular orders from the new Home Secretary apparently, showed a very different attitude from last November. The crowd was well behaved and sympathetic to the women, thereby disproving your prophecy that such an undertaking at night was ill-advised, and proving the contention of the Women’s Social and Political Union that it was far better for women to wait till the honest working man could be out to see fair play.

For the rest your statements are inaccurate, not to say ill-advised. You say that the victory of woman suffrage, when won, will be attributed to Mrs. Fawcett and her forty [or rather fifty] years of hard effort and not the Amazonian efforts for six years of Mrs. Pankhurst. We do not mind one little bit to whom the victory is attributed, so long as it is won. But you cannot wonder when you contemplate the position of woman suffrage just six years ago after forty years of untiring, devoted effort, that some women at any rate thought that a change of method was necessary. The result has justified this change. Look at the position of the question in the forefront of politics to-day. Look at the utterances of that politician Mr. Lloyd George at Bath last night. Would such an astute and slim [devious] politician as he have made a similar speech six years ago? Observe the signs of the times, and the result of militancy is more than justified.—I am, &c.

EMILY WILDING DAVISON
31, Coram Street, W.C., November 25

[Our article spoke of what was ‘likely,’ and while we think the actual occurrences sufficiently regrettable, the fact that they were not worse is quite consistent with the truth of the statement that as seen in advance they were likely to be. The magnitude of the police arrangements shows that we were by no means singular in our view of the probabilities. We fail to see that ‘militancy’ deserves the credit of the fact that the suffrage movement is more advanced than it was six years ago. So are many other movements which militancy has neither helped nor hindered. –EDITOR]

November 26, 1911, To the Editor of The Sunday Times

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November 26, 1911, To the Editor of The Sunday Times

Sir, in your issue of last Sunday appeared a further letter from Mr. C.F. Mullins at the same

time as my letter explaining the meaning of Universal Suffrage,. On reading this letter I saw

that I had made a mistake in speaking of Mr. Mullins almost as an advocate of Manhood

suffrage and therefore of classing him with Mr. Asquith.

Mr. Mullin’s letter, however, well reinforces my own remarks on the dangers of

Manhood Suffrage without Womanhood Suffrage, the two together being essential for a

genuine democracy. Those cities which Mr. Mullins and his friend Mr. T.C. Van Ness, quote

as warnings—namely, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis, and San Francisco, are all

cities which have Manhood Suffrage only, excepting now San Francisco. Thereby hangs a

tale! Those great cities are riddled with the faults of vice, bribery, corruption and

bureaucracy, so much so that no decent men will easily be persuaded to enter politics. San

Francisco was in precisely the same position and it was the better element that was

desirous of purifying the State which recently urged forward Women Suffrage. You

remember how the vote went. The first announcement which came in from the towns, and

especially San Francisco, where the “bosses,” “wets,” and bureaucrats held the rein of

power, went against Woman Suffrage, to the premature delight of anti-suffragists, but the

vote of the country districts, which was a pure vote, completely reversed the early

tendency and the women of California were enfranchised, at which all the friends of

progress rejoiced greatly. __Yours, etc.,

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

31-Coram-street, W.C., November 23

November 19, 1911 To the Editor of The Sunday Times and November 26, 1911, To the Editor of The Sunday Times

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November 19, 1911 To the Editor of The Sunday Times and November 26, 1911, To the

Editor of The Sunday Times

These two letters represent Davison’s frustration at the notion of the primacy of the male

sex in the political realm. In the first she repeats her previous charge against Asquith that

he has drawn a line between the citizen who is of full age and competent understanding and

all women. Asquith made it clear that women were not included in the concept of citizen.

The Liberal anxiety that women would vote Conservative, or, would vote as their husbands

tell them to appears in the reference to Asquith’s contention that a man “ought not to be

entitled to more than one” vote. But the second paragraph of the first letter, typical of

Davison’s arguments, goes more fully to the issue as she sees it. A transition at the end of the

first paragraph asserts that to be opposed to woman suffrage means that one accepts the

notion that women are not fully human. Such thinking is evidence of a radically dangerous

political situation, a tyranny of autocracy in which the male sex is “the” ruler, and because

this “autocrat” is an entire sex–a large number of people, unlike a single autocrat–it cannot

be swayed. Such “glorification of the male” threatens the stability of the British state. Citing

New Zealand, which granted women suffrage in 1893, and Australia, which granted women

suffrage in 1894, as examples of progressive nations whose democracy is real, she invokes

Abraham Lincoln’s concluding words in his Gettysburg Address delivered at the dedication of

the Union Cemetery created at the site of the Gettysburg battlefield, site of a signal victory for

the Union and for the principle that the American government is “of the people, by the people,

and for the people.”

In the second letter Davison acknowledges that she may have misinterpreted Mr.

Mullins’ intent in pointing out that the vote, when not valued, can lead to disastrous

consequences. In citing the examples of a string of American cities, Mullins provides Davison

with an excellent opportunity to point out that the corruption and political chicanery he

instances occurs in cities where women do not have the vote. She concludes with pointing

out that the male voters of San Francisco, whose politics were notoriously corrupt in the early

twentieth century, voted against woman suffrage, but were overcome by the votes of men

outside the city, a victory for woman suffrage and a victory over corruption.

November 19, 1911, To the Editor of The Sunday Times

Sir, will you allow me to point out that the letter from your correspondent, C.F. Mullins,

which you head ‘Universal Suffrage,’ and which encourages the heading by the use of the

term in the letter, is a contradiction in terms? Universal Suffrage, of course, means or

should mean that every woman as well as every man of adult age should have a vote or

voice in the State, and that thus the doctrine of Government by consent of the governed

should be fulfilled. That Mr. Mullins does not mean this is clear from his description of the

present Government proposition as one ‘to give a vote to every male aged twenty-one and

upwards,’ and his further statement that ‘a long experience as resident in a country where

Universal Suffrage exists has taught me that a large proportion of people value at nothing

a vote that costs them nothing and they part with it freely for reasons often based upon

anything but their country’s good.’ Such a statement as this, taken in conjunction with Mr.

Asquith’s own words, as to what constitutes a citizen, shows clearly that these spurious

democrats simply do not include the word ‘woman’ in that of citizen. Mr. Asquith said on

November 7, as on February 8, that ‘a man’s right to vote depends on his being a citizen,

and, prima facie, a man who is a citizen of full age and competent understanding ought to

be entitled to a vote, but he ought not to be entitled to more than one.’ He then proceeded

to assert that in his opinion the term ‘man’ did not include ‘woman.’ In plain English Mr.

Asquith asserted that women could not be citizens or of competent understanding. It is the

old reassertion of the Anti-that women are not ‘people’ or ‘human’ but of some lower order

or ‘sub-human.’

This consideration leads me to see the damaging fallacy which takes all value from

Mr. Asquith’s or Mr. Mullins’s definition of democracy. They are not democrats at all, but

demagogues, and as such far more dangerous upholders of tyranny than any unscrupulous

autocrat. The autocracy of sex is far worse than the autocracy of a single person. For one

single person can be influenced or driven, but a sex cannot. It would create too abstract a

danger to overcome. The ‘glorification of the male’ (as Miss Pankhurst expressed it) can

only end in disaster for the nation and the women. And there lies the explanation of the

failure of ‘Universal Suffrage’ (sic !) in other countries, which Mr. Mullins deplores.

There is ample justification in this theory in the genuinely Universal Suffrage of New

Zealand and Australia. Compare the genuinely progressive state of those commonwealths

with the still spurious Republic of the United States, or even with that of France. These

latter fail because they are not genuine Republics, countries where the public welfare is the

desideratum. Why? Because one half of the Republic is excluded from direct participation

in public affairs, and as a result there is no voice ‘of the people, by the people, and for the

people,’ which ‘people,’ however much Mr. Asquith and his like may deny it, consists of

women as well as of men.—

Yours, etc.,

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

31 Coram-Street, W.C., November 16 [1911]

The Spirit of Unrest

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November 17, 1911, To the Editor of The Standard, “The Spirit of Unrest”

Davison likely knew of Marjorie Bowen (1885-1952) because of the spectacular success

of her novel The Viper of Milan (1906), first of a series of 150 books of history, historical

romance, gothic horror, and biography she wrote over the course of her life, under a

variety of pseudonyms. Between The Viper of Milan and the date of Davison’s letter, Bowen

published six subsequent novels, all popular successes. She was hailed as a young genius,

her youth somewhat exaggerated by the publisher of The Viper of Milan who advertised

that she was born in 1888. Ironically, according to Amanda Salmonson’s online biography

(http://www.violetbooks.com/bowen.html), Bowen’s own life had been much more limited,

unhappy and restricted than the brave assertions Davison takes exception to would lead

one to believe. It’s conceivable that in the heady years of her early success that Bowen did

feel that women could achieve great things on their own talent, but it is also true that her

income from her writing was not hers to keep or spend, but rather placed under her mother’s

control and seemingly dispersed as soon as it was earned. According to Salmonson, she fled to

Paris, seeking independence and liberty, but eventually gave in to her mother’s importuning

and returned to London. In 1912 she married Zefferino Constanza, and Italian engineer, and

went to live in Italy, away from her family. Davison rejects Bowen’s opinion that women

can achieve the independent success they desire, calling attention to the masses of women

for whom financial success is beyond their grasp. She cites women working in sweat shop

conditions of employment, and the unknown number of women subjected to sexual slavery

in what was termed the white slave traffic in which women were reduced to a sub-human

status, entirely defined by their sex. Affirming her conviction that progress and evolution

must win the day, she identifies “the spirit of the age” as the means by which all women will

claim full humanity and autonomy.

Sir, — The contribution of Miss Marjorie Bowen to ‘Women’s Platform’ headed ‘The Spirit of

Unrest’ will do more to win converts to the Suffrage cause than many an eloquent defence

of it. This young girl of genius who has leapt suddenly into unexpected fame is clearly

a ‘darling of the gods’; but still, no one could have foreseen that she could conclude her

article with such an entirely selfish note as that struck by the words: ‘A gifted woman can

now, without touching even the fringe of masculine activities foreign to her nature, exercise

an influence and achieve a fame equal to the utmost that the demand for freedom could

wring from a weakening race of men in any lamentable future.’ Because Miss Marjorie

Bowen and Mrs. Humphry Ward have been so lucky as to achieve this result, are they

to tell the thousands of slaves of sweating and the white slave traffic that women ‘are

as free as they are ever likely to be under any conditions of affairs’? Such a statement

is a hideously selfish mockery. What Miss Bowen has failed to grasp is that the spirit

manifested among women is the spirit of the age, which no longer allows us to be poor

dumb brutish things, but human beings with a voice, a will, a soul, an intellect.

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

31, Great Coram-street, W.C.

Militant Woman Suffragists

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November 17, 1911, To the Editor of The Yorkshire Observer, “Militant Woman Suffragists”

If the letters Davison wrote over the month of November, in which she seems to take on all

comers, give the reader a sense that she may have felt embattled, the letter below suggests

she felt her back against a wall. Of course her determination did not flinch, but it may have

occurred to her that the goal she sought would be denied and that the Woman Suffrage

movement might die the death of a thousand cuts. Here she tries to explain why Asquith’s

“universal suffrage” is not universal at all. She argues against the “yes, but” syndrome typified

by the editorial addendum to her letter.

Davison seems to take comfort in the fact that the national Press coverage of Asquith’s

proposal to bring a bill for universal manhood suffrage recognized the proposal as a dodge,

and as a betrayal of the woman’s suffrage movement. But she pushes back on criticism of all

suffragists’ disappointment that after two years of waiting with justifiable expectation that

a woman suffrage bill would become law, they are angry. Faithful to her cause, she rebuts

the charge that suffragettes are hysterical, saying that they are “practical” politicians who

will now think about how and when to press their cause further. In a sentence that seems to

presage the events about to unfold when in early December she initiates her own militant

campaign of setting fire to Post Office boxes in London, she shows her determination to win,

at all costs.

This letter is the first of a series of letters accompanied by editorial responses to her

words. The letters she writes over the next year are often part of a dialogue with another

writer, or the editor of a paper. It seems that she had become well-known for her militant

devotion, as well as for her active pen.

Sir, –The Press of the country were practically united in attributing the Prime Minister’s

Manhood Suffrage more to a desire to swamp votes for women. We of the Women’s Social

and Political Union at once saw through the move, took up the challenge, and hurled

defiance at the enemies of our cause. But we are not, as recent criticisms of yours would

seem to suggest, hysterical fanatics, who need but a word of opposition to break out into

blind frenzy. Our self-restraint during the past two years is evidence enough of that. We

are, above all, practical politicians nowadays, and we shall make our moves when and

how it seems best to us. You seem to think that the mere raison d’etre of militancy is

advertisement. That, of course, follows, but it is not, and never has been, the chief reason

for militancy. Militancy means in plain language determination to win at all costs—I am,

&c.,

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

31, Coram Street, London, W.C. November 15

[We distinguish the end in view from the methods pursued. While we condemn many of

the latter, we are in sympathy with the former.—Editor.]

The Feminine Outlook

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November 15, 1911, To the Editor of The Throne, “The Feminine Outlook”

Emily Davison falls back on an ancient analogy that appears in Aristotle’s Politics and

Ethics, and recurs in the history of European politics: that the home is the microcosm of the

state, that the state flourishes when households are kept in harmonious order, and that a

good society has neither too many rich nor too many poor households. Davison’s assertion

that households with one predominant view—either the male or the female cannot be happy

accords with Aristotle’s notion that the mean is preferable to excess or deficiency in human

affairs. Her term is “equal value.” The pith of the letter occurs in the third paragraph in

which she moves from generalizations to quoting David Lloyd George, Chancellor of the

Exchequer, in his 1908 speech about the need for women’s voices and opinions to help craft

legislation which will enable to country’s prosperity to increase. Recalling his words in an

earlier time, she next cites his deeds, his role in the Insurance Bill and its inadequate

provisions for women. “Deeds, not Words” is her motto.

Sir,–Your correspondent who signs herself ‘Domesticated’ asks me to explain how the

extension of the franchise to women is ‘for the good of the whole human race, and is

necessary for evolution.’ It is with great pleasure that I answer her demand.

As she evidently is one of those fortunate women who are blessed with a good home

and a wise husband, I think that I shall best explain what I believe by the analogy of the

home. That is, the most ideal home which is based upon the foundation of mutual respect

and consideration, where the privileges and the self-sacrifices are on both sides, where the

wise husband and wife take counsel together. ‘Domesticated’ evidently has some of this

ideal in her home, for she asserts with pride that her husband ‘certainly thinks it worth

while to consult with me on all the thousand and one little points which occur from day to

day,’ whilst she no doubt on her part seeks his counsel on some of her own special

interests. For in the ideal family, although there is equality that does not imply

similarity—‘Men are men and women are women,’ which put into other words means that,

although in some respects the two sexes have a common ground of humanity, yet in others

they necessarily have a different point of view. The home where the one view or the other

is predominant or exclusively asserted is an incomplete and unhappy home, even if

outwardly peaceful. Your ideal home has both points of view given an equal value.

But so is it in the State. The State after all is made up of homes, and the home is but

the epitome of the State—therefore, the State requires both points of view. The Chancellor

of the Exchequer set forth the truth in a very clear way in addressing a gathering of Liberal

women at the Albert Hall on December 5th, 1908 when he said:

My convictions is that you will never get really good, effective measures for

housing, for temperance, or for other social reforms, until you can get the

millions of women of the land to co-operate in such legislation. It is for that

reason that I am standing here today, to declare that in my judgement it is

not merely the right of woman, but the interest of all, that you should call in

the aid, the counsel, the inspiration of woman to help in the fashioning of

legislation, which will improve, cleanse purify, and fill with plenty the homes

upon which the future destiny of this great commonweal of nations depends.

Two instances which I would fain mention well support the theory. The Insurance

Bill, which the Chancellor of the Exchequer is now passing into law, is so inadequate,

amended as it is, in the woman’s part of the scheme, that many bodies of women wish that

he had left them out until they themselves could have voiced their own views, when

enfranchised. The other is that there are no less than three societies of men formed for the

exclusive purpose of winning the vote for women, because they consider this absolutely

essential for the well-being of the nation. These are the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage,

the Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement, and the Men’s League for Justice

for Women.

Yours, etc.

Emily Wilding Davison

31, Coram Street, W.C.

November 7th, 1911

Woman’s Suffrage

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Monday, November 13, 1911, To the Editor of the Irish News, “Woman’s Suffrage”

Smarting from Asquith’s withdrawal of his government’s assent to the bill for women’s

suffrage, and his substitution of a universal manhood suffrage bill, Davison allies the suffrage

cause with the Irish home rule movement, citing Mr. O’Doherty’s broad sense of the power

of truly universal suffrage—male and female—in supporting the state. Undoubtedly the

intellectual alliance she feels would have made her even more suspect in the eyes of those

who opposed Home Rule for Ireland. This is one more instance of Davison’s willingness in

November, after Asquith’s rejection, to push back at the government wherever and however

she might.

Sir,–In your issue of November 6th there is an excellent report of the lecture on ‘Adult

Suffrage’ given by Mr. O’Doherty on November 2nd to the Dawn of Freedom Branch U.I.L

[United Irish League]. It is the most genuinely democratic discourse which it has been my

lot to read for some time, because in it Mr. O’Doherty recognizes that the strength of a

nation lies in the fact that every single member of it, woman as well as man, has a

responsibility, a pride, and an interest in it. This is true government by consent.

To read such a statement as this, in contrast to Mr. Asquith’s dictum repeated to the

adult suffrage deputation on Tuesday, that ‘a man’s right to vote depends on his being

a citizen, and prima facie a man who is a citizen of full age and competent

understanding ought to be entitled to a vote, but he ought not to be entitled

to more than one,’ is to fill us with amazement. As Mr. Asquith afterwards

proceeded to say that as far as he was concerned the term ‘man’ did not include ‘woman,’

he evidently does not allow women to be either ‘citizens’ or of ‘competent understanding.’

Compared to such an illogical attitude, Mr. O’Doherty’s view that the woman’s point of

view is absolutely vital to the State is most convincing. It is hoped that all democrats will

now show the reality of the faith that is in them by demanding without reserve that the

Government shall include women equally with men in the new Reform Bill. –Yours, etc.,

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

31 Coram Street, London, W.C.,

November 10th, 1911