Of all the subjects which Emily Davison engaged in the summer and early fall of

the suffering of her two friends Mary Leigh and Gladys Evans in Mountjoy Prison:

Sir, — As one who has many times undergone the torture of forcible feeding,

I pray that you will allow me to appeal to the people of England against that

which is now proceeding in Mountjoy Prison. If our nation could only realize the

degradation, the unspeakable misery, which it involves to the helpless prisoner, it

could not allow such re-enactments of mediaeval barbarity to be carried on in our

midst. Can it permit women of noble character to be tortured for consciences’

sake? Yours, &c.,

Emily Wilding Davison

Longhorsley, Northumberland

September 5, 1912

Shortly after this letter was published The Newcastle Daily Journal ran a story about

Evans in Mountjoy Prison in Dublin”. See September 18, 1912, “Forcible Feeding: Mr Bernard Shaw and the Suffragettes”:

Sir, In Mr. Dudley’s reply to my letter he has helped me very materially in my aim

of making clear the justice and inevitability of ‘militancy’ for keen suffragists at

this juncture. He takes up a sentence of mine and interprets it in a special sense

of his own, which however, suits my purpose very well. My sentence runs thus:

–‘The onus to prove that militancy, steadily increasing in force, is not needed

lies with Mr. Dudley and others who have not won for us yet that weapon which,

well manipulated, is the most effective and least destructive to win reform—

namely, the vote.’ My idea was to suggest to Mr. Dudley that our position was

an extremely hard one. The vote is the constitutional weapon which even men

nowadays do not wield as effectively as they might (hence the expression ‘well

manipulate’), and as a result have often to supplement by the clumsy and

dangerous addenda of strikes, riots, &c. But in our case we have not the up-to-

date weapon which so far surpasses the only one at present at our disposal, and

therefore we realize the extreme necessity of acquiring it.

Mr. Dudley, however, interprets my phrase as implying that we must win

our vote by means of the votes of men. This gives me an even better case. The

men who could bring the Government to book by means of ‘the fear of the loss of

votes and so of power’ ought to have seen to it that women had the vote. They

could have done so easily in 1884, and even more easily without loss of self-

respect in 1910 and 1911. What did they do? In 1884 women’s suffrage was

thrown overboard for fear of overweighting the ship. In 1910 and 1911 women’s

suffrage was tenderly and effectively killed by politicians who professed to be in

favour of it. Mr. Dudley must admit that there is no case for the men’s advocacy.

What, therefore, remains?

There is no hope in the men as yet. The matter must be therefore forced

into the forefront of politics by the women themselves. Owing to the foolish

violence opposed to justice by the Government, and therefore indirectly by the

men, the pace is now becoming more and more furious, and will be greater as

worse violence is displayed. But on every effort of the women the Government,

and therefore the men, persist in using more violence instead of doing the right

thing. What is the result? It is not a pitched battle between the women and the

Government. In that battle, tortured by cruel repression, the mental, moral, and

bodily anguish of forcible feeding, and the iniquity of vindictive sentences, the

women must inevitably suffer terribly to the point of death, lifelong injury, and the

like. Still, the men only stand by, and indeed, passively consent. Such is the

slow and conservative spirit of the nation. But there is another and a fine trait in

the national character. It is the love of fair play, the admiration of courage, the

dislike to see the physically weak suffer. That point will be reached some time,

though God only knows how much suffering we women will have to undergo to

rouse the national conscience. Our sure and certain hope of victory lies in this,

that we are ready to endure all things. The same spirit which nerved the

Christians to face death, and worse than death, the torture of mangling by beasts

and the ordeal of fire, inspires us to-day.

But, objects Mr. Dudley, you are turning those who could win you victory

into foes by injuring them. Why injure the innocent? They are not innocent. He

who is not for us is against us, and must take the risks of a battle which he

makes no attempt to stem. The earnest of victory lies in this, that for every step

in our violence the only alternative ways of dealing with us are either by doing

justice or by repressing us with far worse violence, encouraged by the men.

Either way we win. If by the former way (of love), so much the better for the

national conscience. But if by the way of repressive force, still we win, for, as I

have already asserted, we are bound to suffer the most physically in a combat of

brute force, but we also are victorious mentally and morally, for we offer up our

bodies to be a living sacrifice [Romans 12:1-2]. But a time will come, which some of us may not

see with our bodily eyes, when the nation will have exacted a sufficiently terrible

crucifixion, and then in very horror it will cry, ‘Halt, enough!’ In that day will dawn

for England a new era of true religion. But the price will have been gladly paid, –

Yours, &c.

Emily Wilding Davison,

Longhorsley, Northumberland, August, 22

Sir,– In her letter published on Saturday, Miss Davison calls upon me to prove

that militancy, steadily increasing in force, is not needed. My answer is that

women’s suffrage will be best won (to use her own words) by ‘that weapon

which, well manipulated, is the most effective and least destructive to win reform,

namely, the vote’ of the existing electors. She is quite mistaken in thinking that

I question for a moment the heroism and devotion of the militants. I oppose

militancy because, particularly in its later developments, it will not be effective to

win reform.

Miss Davison asks ’If Governments fail to yield to love who can blame women if

they bring the motive of fear into play?’ I do not blame them at all; they are quite

right; but fear of what? Physical violence? The worst Government will refuse

to be terrorized by physical violence. But the fear to which statesmen generally

succumb is the fear of the loss of votes and so of power. Miss Davison should

answer this question: ‘Do the militant outrages turn the votes of electors against

women’s suffrage?’ If so that weapon is not effective at all, but damages friend

and not foe.

Miss Barrett’s letter is answered fully and much better than I could by Mr.

Richardson to-day. My point was that in 1832 outrage was the action of the

mob and not the policy of the Reform leaders. Then, again, I oppose militancy

because it is most destructive and therefore the wrong weapon. If successful it

would destroy not only the present Government but all government. Would no

one imitate their anarchical methods? Their plea is that of Bassanio—

‘To do a great right, do a little wrong;

And curb this cruel devil of his will’

My reply is that of Portia—

‘ ‘Twill be recorded for a precedent;

And many an error, by the same example,

Will rush into the state; it cannot be.’[(12.)]

Yours, &c., W.A. Dudley

Manchester, August 20

In mid August, 1912 Emily Davison entered into an exchange of letters in the pages of the Manchester Guardian with a Mr. W.A. Dudley who criticized militant tactics. Davison’s response, familiar in its argument, contains a slightly different tone from earlier letters. Her she allies the militant tactics increasingly applied by the WSPU with the prophecy of John Stuart Mill, the great liberal supporter of women’s rights, who foresaw the total dedication a campaign to obtain the full spectrum of civil rights for women would bring forth. Her central argument, in her second paragraph, is the one of women’s courage as a form of British courage, here mingled with frustrated anger at the “ribald laughter” and jeering bigotry in Parliament that had met stories of how imprisoned suffragettes have been force fed and mistreated. She recalls the length of time—four years– that women have “suffered violence in their own bodies” before being driven to violence themselves. No longer forward-looking in her expectations, but defensive and angry, Davison moves on the offensive in the last paragraph.

Her reply was met by Dudley’s subsequent response apparently to Davison and a Miss Barratt, who both took exception to his words. Dudley’s defense echoes the larger public sentiment that militancy will not work because it will create more enemies than friends to the cause, and hinder the achievement of Woman Suffrage. But he goes further to suggest that if militancy prevails, it will set a precedent for future militancy that might threaten the state, not just a particular government. He calls for reliance on the power of the vote, not force, to win the day. A certain circularity appears in this exchange, to use the power of the vote one must have the vote; to have the vote women seem to have to use power and force, because nothing else has worked for over fifty years. By the end of the third letter included in the scrapbook, Davison has moved very close to justifying the kind of sacrifice she herself would become on the track at Epsom. Her writing during 1912 is increasingly full of the rhetoric of sacrifice for the cause, a rhetoric which was not hers alone, but which also appears in various pro-suffrage works such as novels (Suffragette Sally), and in the pages of Votes for Women. Davison’s second letter, the third in the exchange to be included in her scrapbook, expatiates on these themes—that the vote, the surest way and the most desirable way for women to achieve political voice and equality can only come through men who so far have been either indifferent or opposed; that women have suffered grievous injury, to the point of death or maiming at the hands of their own government in their struggle; that women steel themselves to continue by invoking cultural heroes who have faced the prospect of death, here the Christian martyrs whose spirit “inspires us to-day.”

Sir.—Your correspondent Mr. W.A. Dudley evidently does not understand the true meaning of our militant tactics. That was, I venture to assert, very clearly foreshadowed and set forth by our pioneer champion, John Stuart Mil, when he declared that until some women were prepared to put the cause of their political emancipation before everything else in the world, including personal, home, and party ties, they would never win the day. This, of course, is the gist of militancy, which takes various forms according to the need of the moment, the weapon varying from that of the ‘powerful pen’ to the ‘the hammer, the axe, or the firebrand.’

The justification for the latter weapons is the violence used against us. Are we women such backboneless creatures, inferior in caliber to the proverbial worm, that we can tamely submit to the apparently interminable torture of our foremost fighters? Are we to bear without resentment the invariably ribald laughter which greets any mention of our comrades’ sufferings in Parliament? In short, have the women of England none of the pride which has made our island the world-power that it is? The spirit which made our ancestors win their freedom at all costs is burning brightly in the hearts of those who are called militants to-day. But the eyes of the larger number are still so holden [restrained, kept in one place?] that they cannot see, and they excuse their blindness by the readiest means. Until quite recently opponents excused their bigotry by jeering at our ‘pinprick’ methods. Having thereby roused us to the determination to show that we could adopt any methods when they were justified by abominable outrage, those who wish to delay justice to women turn round to abuse our violence, which at present has been done only by the advanced few.

Reforms can only be carried by one of two alternative motives, love or fear. Governments are not yet apparently civilized enough to yield to love. But if they fail to yield to love (the devoted service of women to the State for generations), who is Mr. Dudley, or anyone else, that he can blame women if they bring the motive of fear into play? Mr. Asquith referred in one of the Parliamentary debates on women’s suffrage to the saying that those who take up the sword will perish by the sword. But who took up the sword first in this case? Certainly not the militant women, who, determined though they were, suffered violence in their own bodies for at least four years of valiant agitation before even individual ones retaliated on Government windows.

The onus to prove that militancy, steadily increasing in force, is not needed lies with Mr. Dudley and others who have not won for us yet that weapon, which, well manipulated, is the most effective and least destructive to win reform—namely, the vote. Meantime the justification of our warfare lies in the urgency of our cause and the cant of those who refuse to act up to their principles. Yours, etc.,

EMILY WILDING DAVISON
Longhorsley, S.O. Northumberland

Although the editors of The Manchester Guardian expressed disagreement with Davison’s positions in some of her letters from the end of 1911, The Guardian was generally more supportive of the suffrage movement than other newspapers, especially The Times and The Sunday Times. Their call for an official explanation is somewhat tepid, given the conditions Davison describes. A slightly abbreviated version of the same story also appeared on Saturday, May 4, 1912 in The Standard.

We have received from Miss Sylvia Pankhurst, who writes from Lindon Gardens, London, W., the following letters from Miss Emily Wilding Davison, a militant suffragist, at present imprisoned in Holloway Gaol. The statements made appear to demand some official explanation, which will no doubt be forthcoming:–

April 9
‘Account of my forcible feeding, February 29 to March 7, 1912—I was sentenced at the Old Bailey for setting fire to pillar-boxes to six months in the third division without hard labour. Hence I was entitled to Mr. Churchill’s new prison regulation, which I received at first. My sentence being a long one, an appeal was made for me against it by the Men’s Society for Women’s Rights, the aim of which appeal I desired to be chiefly that I might be transferred to the first class, so that I might be allowed writing facilities, both because I am a journalist and because I have written a book which at the time had every chance of being published. This appeal was refused on February 5. I was very much upset at the time—so much so that I lost my appetite and could take little food. Then on February 10 and 12 the remainder of the twenty companion suffragettes whom I had with me finished their sentences and went out. Meantime I had petitioned (February 6 or 7) to the Home Secretary for writing facilities and to be allowed to see the publishers who were disposed to take my book. I received no answer to this petition till February 27, surely a very long delay.

“Owing to my anxiety and to my loneliness (I exercised alone and was practically alone all day) I got more and more depressed, and could only eat with difficulty. I always took something, as I had a dread of forcible feeding. I was not weighed during this period for some time, when I had, of course, lost weight considerably. No notice was taken of my poor appetite and depressed state of health till about February 26. Then all of a sudden the prison authorities began to make remarks. I always told them that I took what I could. On Tuesday, February 27, Dr. Sullivan (then acting as Governor) came to me and told me that my petition for writing facilities was refused. The next day, February 28, an expert from the Home Office (I am told) came to see me with Matron and Dr. Sullivan. To him also I said that I had always eaten, even when I did not want food.

“Next day, February 29, I saw Dr. Scott, who was back, and asked for a petition form to the Home Secretary, which I received and wrote. I explained all that happened, and drew the Home Secretary’s attention to the fact that even if forcible feeding were legal when the person refused food, it was not legal when the person was eating. Dr. Sullivan came to my cell about twelve, and said he was going to feed me by force and said ‘as I know you can stand it.’ I protested in the same way. He left the cell. A few moments later four or five wardresses came into my cell with a wooden armchair, seized me in spite of my holding on to the bars of the window, and carried me shrieking ‘Shame!’ across the courtyard to the Remand Hospital. I was carried up the stairs clinging to all I could seize, and taken to the end of the corridor, and then fed by force as quickly as possible. My clothes were torn open. I was then put into one of the cells near. When I was left alone I barricaded my cell from the door to the window with the iron bed, wash-stand, table, and night-chair. When they came about four they could not open the door. They went away and fetched people. Men with crowbars came. There was a sort of wicket in the door, which they burst open. There was a long struggle. As fast as they moved the bed I forced it back. Crowbars nearly fell on my head. In the struggle my hand was severely injured, so that blood was shed all over the floor, walls, and one of the men’s trousers. The finger is still unhealed. They were busy bursting the door. At last the man, who had tried several times and failed, put his foot through and got in, and then he removed the barricade. I was seized, and forcibly fed. I was put into another and darker cell. There I remained in bed, and was fed by force twice a day for fifteen times. I refused to speak to anyone. On the Saturday the Governor came in to read me an answer from the Home Secretary, to say that he had given authority for my being forcibly fed. One day I became aware by certain signs that my suffragette friends were in Holloway. I felt so miserable and helpless that I felt that the best thing was for me to get to them and get their mental and moral support. The whole condition of weakness and loneliness made me feel so bad that I realized that I must get away.

“On Thursday afternoon, March 7, I told the Governor that if he would take me right away from the Remand Hospital (of which I now have a horror, as I realize how absolutely one is in the power of authorities there) and treated me well, I thought I could take my food. They tried me with food in the Remand Hospital first, but I steadfastly refused it. I got up, bathed and dressed, when I found how weak I was, and that I was actually much thinner than when I last had my clothes on. I was taken to the Convicted Hospital, and fed up there for a week. I was then allowed to go in amongst my suffragette companions. To every possible authority since (including the Prison Commissioners) I twice protested against being fed by force when I had not refused my food.
(signed)

“EMILY WILDING DAVISON”

“April 10, 1912
“To-day I saw the Visiting Magistrate. I said ‘I wish to protest at the fact that I was fed by force here from February 29 to March 7, although I had not refused my food. I understood that the only legal justification for the operation against the person’s will was that the person refused food.’ Here the Chairman prevented my saying any more by interrupting: ‘In short, you complain that you were fed by force without just cause,’ I replied, ‘That is so,” He then said, ’Have you any other application?’ I said, ‘No.’ He then requested me to retire for a few moments. I had to do so. When I returned, the Chairman (I believe he is Sir Vezey Strong ) said to me: ‘We have inquired into the matter. The doctor says that you were not taking enough food to keep you in good health, and we consider he was justified.’ I at once said, ‘Please allow me to state my case!” But he refused to hear me any further. I was forced out of the room by the wardresses, just managing to get out as I went: ’But things were neglected which ought not to have been neglected.’ If the prison authorities are allowed to take this view, who is safe from forcible feeding?

“E.W.D.”

This story, slightly abbreviated, appeared also on Saturday, May 4, 1912 in The Standard.

This is the last letter Davison would write in 1911, and the last one for many months, forin early 1912 she was incarcerated in Holloway prison. Here she warms once more to the theme that men can be as “illogical” as women. The subject is the WSPU’s rejection of woman suffrage dependent on “arbitrarily determined” qualifications such as residency requirements or income requirements–-“fancy franchises” based on an arbitrarily determined qualification. The WSPU sought the parliamentary vote for women on the same basis as men had it, a simple goal, yet one that seemed in December, 1911, both tantalizingly near and agonizingly distant. Her conclusion that the goal will be achieved by “frank and fearless militancy—the policy of keeping on pestering” presages her own actions and writing in the year to come.

Sir, –The letter of ‘Disfranchised by Marriage’ proves completely and incontrovertibly how absurd is the position taken up by Mr. Lloyd George and those who agree with him as to the solution of the women’s suffrage question. The only logical and possible ground on which to fight for this reform is that insisted upon by the W.S.P.U.—‘The vote on the same terms as it is or may be granted to men,’—otherwise the question is landed into the old quagmire of ‘fancy’ franchises against which Mr. Lloyd George and others have inveighed so much in the past. It really is extraordinary how illogical people are on this franchise question? [sic] You yourself sought to beg it by declaring that the new bill will not mean a manhood suffrage qualification, but a change from a number of fancy franchises to that of residence—another fancy franchise. It is no doubt possible to cure one evil by another evil, but often the last stage of the experiment is worse than the first.

The plain truth of the matter is that the sex which claims to be logical is so absolutely illogical that it seems impossible to pin it down to fact. Hence it is that frank and fearless militancy—the policy of keeping on pestering—seems to be ‘the only way.’ Yours, &c.,

EMILY WILDING DAVISON
31 Coram Street, London, W.C.

[Why is the qualification by a brief residence a ’fancy franchise’? It includes everybody who has any kind of fixed abode. We can imagine nothing much less fanciful. If the female sex is the logical one our correspondent is perhaps not a good sample of it. To try to wreck every practicable policy is apparently her conception of the logical way of setting about to get something done.—Ed. ‘GUARD.’]

Among the charges leveled at the suffragettes was the charge that their partisans were paid employees, “hirelings” who were more interested in their pay than the cause that they worked to promote. Davison’s retort to such a charge leveled by one Katherine Beaumont reflects the reality of the situation. Middle class and upper class women of means were able to “support the cause,” but women without financial security required some sort of support in order to allow them to live and to protest. Just where Davison fell on the spectrum of the comfortable is not entirely clear. She speaks in passing of holding various kinds of employment—secretary, journalist—all related in some way or another to language and writing, which were her passions.

Miss Davison writes from 31, Coram-street, London: — Your correspondent Katharine Beaumont, of Bath, casts some unfounded aspersions on those who lifted up ‘the voice’ on behalf of women at Mr. Lloyd George’s meeting on November 24. She repeats as the remark of one of the men ejected the remark made by Mr. Lloyd George himself, that the interrupter had earned his railway fare. None of the men themselves would make such a remark as that. It was Mr. Lloyd George who on a previous occasion characterized such men as ‘paid hirelings.’ If Mr. Lloyd George knew the amount of batterings these brave men receive on these occasions he would rather exclaim that such heroism was ‘without money and without price.’ Miss Beaumont asserts that the curse of the women’s movement is the paid agitator. That shows how little she knows of this militant movement, of the countless sacrifices of position, money, friends, and all that enriches life. She apparently is ignorant of the fact that most of the militant and other work is done entirely voluntarily by those who can possibly afford to do so. As for the few who cannot possibly devote their lives to this movement that they love so well unless a little money is given to them to keep body and soul together, there is a true saying that ‘the labourer is worthy of his hire,’ and surely never were there more devoted labourers!

Another exchange between Davison and the editor of The Guardian that turns on radically different perceptions of the role of violence in politics and social reform, the history of its success, and the fidelity of the Liberal Government to its promises about a Woman Suffrage bill. In citing the Franchise Riots of 1866 and the English Civil War, Davison is not only recalling “righeous violence” that succeeded by virtue of the justice of its cause, but also men’s use of violence to achieve their goals. Is this extreme route, a last resort, she implies, to be denied to women who also know their cause to be just? The day this letter appeared was the day that Davison determined to end her current employement as the first step to her militant acts of arson aimed at pillar, or mail, boxes.

Sir, — In your comment on Miss Christabel Pankhurst’s straightforward letter on militancy you say: ‘Miss Pankhurst is certainly now definite enough and wrong enough. She cannot achieve what she proposes by the means she designs and she ought not to.’ Will you allow me to say to this, ‘Wait and see’? All English history gives the congtradiction to your assertion. In our history we read of many deeds of violence done to win reform. The whole Civil War was such an example. But the blame for the violence lies not on those who do it, but on those who drive the agitators to such extremes. The truth of this is proved by the famous scene between Mr. Beales and Mr.Walpole, the House Secretary, on the day after the Hyde Park riots.

You object to the use of militancy because you assert that if militancy succeeds ‘anybody else could obtain their ends, quite irrespective of their merits, by similar means.’ May I here quote some words from Molesworth’s History of England, vol. 3, in the description of the Franchise Riots of 1866?–

‘Wise and thoughtful men saw that these gatherings and disturbances were the expression of a strong feeling that could not safely be despised. They knew that neither Mr. Beales nor any of his associates could stir these multitudes as they had done unless there were real and deeply felt grievances at the bottom of the demand for reform made in this violent and unpleasant manner.’

No undeserving cause could succeed by violence. The success of violence is the test of the righteousness of the cause, and the militancy of the W.S.P.U. has justified itself at every turn of events. The utterances of Mr. Asquity or Mr. Lloyd George are proof enough if there were not also the great and growing feeling in the country.

Are you sure that it is ‘an incomparably more difficult task’ to expel from the Cabinet the Prime Minister and the minority opposed to woman suffrage than ‘to carry women’s suffrage under existing conditions’? In order to do either Mr. Lloyd George would have ‘to stand or fall’ by the course he adopted if he meant to win. The bolder, the easier and also the more heroic, way would be for him to threaten his resignation from the Cabinet (which could not afford his loss) unless the Government offered a Government measure giving equal franchise rights to women as well as men. Yours, &

Emily Wilding Davison
31, Coram Street, London, W.C.
November 29

[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 a confutation.--ED. 'GUARD.']

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’]

Officer”

Emily Davison could not resist the chance to point out the paradox resulting from separating

Parliamentary action.

Sir, –In your columns to-day you note that for the first time on record a lady occupies the

position of returning officer for a Parliamentary election. Mrs. Lees, the Mayor of Oldham,

is the phenomenon, and it has been decided that she is the proper person to have the duty.

But the especially interesting feature of this remarkable occasion is that if by any chance

the poll resulted in a draw Mrs. Lees would have the casting vote; the woman would decide.

Here is a genuine nut for anti-suffragists to crack! The constitution of their League runs

thus:–

‘To resist the proposal to admit women to the Parliamentary franchise and to

Parliament, whilst at the same time maintaining the principle of the representation of

women on municipal and other bodies concerned with the domestic and social affairs of

the community.’

This dilemma into which they are thrust by these two objectives is here evident. By

becoming mayor of a town a woman may be obliged to exercise the Parliamentary

franchise, and with more than the average amount of effect. Therefore by their illogical

attitude, whilst they are ostensibly working to prevent women getting the Parliamentary

vote, by the second part of their creed they are promoting women’s enfranchisement. –

Yours., &c.,

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

31, Coram-street, W.C., November 3