MRS. PANKHURST IN RUSSIA
Emmeline Pankhurst, the English militant suffrage leader, known to
thousands in this country, went to Russia in late June of this year
to organize the women of the country and help them to support the
provisional government and to oppose the Bolsheviki or extremists.
She succeeded in organizing a group of strong and influential women
leaders, and she might have accomplished great good had not Kerensky
frowned on the movement. Mrs. Pankhurst’s project, in my opinion, was
one of Kerensky’s many lost opportunities.
This will answer a natural curiosity on the part of the reader as to
why Mrs. Pankhurst came to be in revolutionary Russia. She went of her
own initiative and under the auspices of her suffrage organization, the
Women’s Social and Political Union, but her plan had the warm approval
of the English premier, Mr. Lloyd George, who personally issued her
passport and that of her secretary, Jessie Kenney. Mr. Lloyd George
also gave directions that Mrs. Pankhurst and Miss Kenney should be
allowed to travel on the only passenger boat that plies regularly
between Great Britain and Norway. This boat is strongly convoyed and
it is used by very few people not in the service of the English
government. No one in England has a higher esteem for Mrs. Pankhurst
than Lloyd George, and since the beginning of the war the two erstwhile
enemies have become friends and allies. Mrs. Pankhurst’s suffragettes
fired a house that Mr. Lloyd George was building in the country, and
Mrs. Pankhurst was sentenced to three years’ penal servitude for the
deed. She had served several weeks of the sentence, in hunger strike
intervals which extended over a year or more, when the war broke out
and all internal feuds were declared off in England. The Pankhursts
at once called a truce of militancy and ever since have done yeoman
service in recruiting for the army, collecting money for war sufferers,
especially in Serbia, and in many other lines of patriotic work.
The whole world admired the statesmanship of this policy, but only a
few people know how really statesmanlike it was. Among those who do
know is the English premier, for without it he might not have become
premier. In abandoning militancy Mrs. Pankhurst and her daughter
Christabel were actuated by two motives: they wanted England and the
allies to win the war, and they saw in the war an opportunity to
further the cause of woman suffrage. They were under no delusion that
a grateful country would bestow the vote on its women as a reward for
their unselfish war services. Women have rendered the noblest kind of
service in all the wars that have ever been fought, but no country ever
showed its gratitude by making them citizens for it. Witness our civil
war. Mrs. Pankhurst and Christabel knew that suffrage would come in
England when the political situation suffered certain changes, and it
would come in no other way.
They were in France in July, 1914, Mrs. Pankhurst out of prison under
the famous “Cat and Mouse” act, and resting up for another bout with
the Holloway jailers. Christabel lived in Paris and edited there the
British suffragette weekly newspaper. They watched with deep emotion
the mobilization of the French army and saw the French women drop all
their other activities and mobilize for hospital and relief work. They
agreed that they must go back to England and organize their women for
the same work, and they said: “At last! A chance to get rid of Asquith
and Sir Edward Grey!”
These two men, especially Mr. Asquith, were the arch enemies of the
women’s cause. Mr. Asquith had consistently blocked the woman suffrage
bills in Parliament, even when a large majority of the House of Commons
wanted to vote favorably on them. Mr. Lloyd George, on the other hand,
was, theoretically at least, a suffragist. He wanted the women to have
votes, but he wanted something else a great deal more. He wanted, with
an earnestness amounting to a cosmic urge, to be prime minister of
England. His whole soul being set on that ambition, he was not going
to take people’s minds off of his candidacy by getting into the woman
suffrage controversy. So he put the whole subject one side for future
reference.
Mrs. Pankhurst, great and wise stateswoman that she is, perfectly
understood this. She knew that, if Mr. Lloyd George became premier, he
would probably put a suffrage bill through Parliament, and she and
Christabel knew that the new war cabinet, which they trusted would
come, would probably have Lloyd George at its head. So they bent all
their energies to ousting Mr. Asquith and boosting Mr. Lloyd George.
They criticized caustically, with pen and voice, the cabinet’s war
policies, they turned a whole volume of scorn on England’s Serbian
blunders and the Dardanelles failure. They went all over England
talking about Mr. Asquith and his ministers, and their work told. So
when Mrs. Pankhurst decided to go to Russia and do what she could to
rally the women of that distracted country, Mr. Lloyd George knew that
she would do it if any one could. He gave her a passport and a safe
conduct, and she went. A little later Ramsay Macdonald, leader of
England’s “little group of wilful men” opposing the war, thought he
would go to Russia and undo any good Mrs. Pankhurst might do.
Mr. Lloyd George at first refused to give Mr. Macdonald a passport, but
his refusal so angered the Bolshevik element in the Petrograd Council
of Soldiers’ and Workmen’s Delegates that Kerensky was actually forced
to ask the English premier to allow Mr. Macdonald to visit Russia. The
English premier therefore consented to issue the passport, but the
Seamen’s Union, which was not in the least afraid of the Petrograd
soldiers and workmen, or of any international misunderstandings,
refused point blank to allow Mr. Ramsay Macdonald to travel on any
boat crossing to Norway. The union served notice that the moment Mr.
Macdonald stepped foot on any boat leaving England the sailors on that
boat would step off. Mr. Ramsay Macdonald accordingly never stepped on
a boat.
Mrs. Pankhurst was very well received in Russia. The newspapers
published columns about her, statesmen and ambassadors called on her,
almost as on a visiting royalty, and the finest women in Petrograd came
to her and welcomed her proffered aid. Which is certainly discouraging
to those suffragists who always try to be good and well mannered and
never picket the White House or disturb a congressman’s afternoon nap.
A series of meetings were arranged for Mrs. Pankhurst, but they were
neither well arranged nor well managed. Some of them got into the hands
of women who had movements of their own to push, and who were willing
to use Mrs. Pankhurst’s drawing capacity to fill a room, but were not
willing to turn the meeting over to her when she got there.
I was present at such a meeting, which had for chairman a lady of title
who had a scheme of some kind, and the speakers were mostly women who
had other schemes, and they all talked and talked about their schemes,
until I feared that Mrs. Pankhurst would never be given a chance to
talk at all. One woman spoke for over an hour about the food situation.
Her remedy was to send a commission to America and beg that a shipload
of food be sent via Archangel to Petrograd. It was pointed out to her
at some length by Mr. MacAllister Smith, an American business man
living in Petrograd, that there was plenty of food nearer home than
America, and that it didn’t need to be begged for.
Through it all Mrs. Pankhurst sat quietly, but I who knew her well
saw a suspicious little color creep into her cheeks and a light of
battle flash into her gray eyes. I don’t know what might have happened,
but what did happen was dramatic. A tall, fine-looking woman in the
back of the room sprang to her feet and burst into a passionate
speech of protest. While the women in that room were wasting time in
inconsequential talk the Germans were steadily advancing, the Russian
troops were retreating and ruin and desolation were at their very
doors. She begged them for the sake of bleeding Russia to drop all
controversy and let Mrs. Pankhurst, if she could, tell them what to do.
As she sat down, or rather dropped exhausted into her seat, Mrs.
Pankhurst stood up. She is a small woman, but when she is in certain
moods she manages somehow to look tall. She looked tall on this
occasion. She spoke in French and her talk lasted not longer than
fifteen minutes, but when she finished half the women in the room would
have gone into the trenches after her. The others looked frightened.
Mrs. Pankhurst told the women that 250 Russian women had gone out of
their homes, donned soldiers’ uniforms and were prepared to give their
lives for their country and the democracy of the world. Mrs. Pankhurst
was naturally an admirer of Botchkareva and her Battalion of Death,
and had a few days before this meeting reviewed the regiment. She told
these women of leisure that if working women were willing to risk
their lives on the battlefield for the freedom of Russia the women
who remained at home ought to be willing to risk their lives on the
streets. Whenever a Bolshevik street orator preached separate peace
or a cessation of fighting, a woman of education and ability ought to
stand up and tell that same street crowd the truth. The women ought to
storm the soviets all over Russia and force the men to support Kerensky
and the Provisional Government in their effort to rally the army and
defeat the Germans.
The movement, she told them, must be a Russian women’s movement only.
No foreigners should appear in it at all. They must do the work, but
she was there to give them the full benefit of her experience as
an organizer. She would show them how to do the work, how to train
speakers, how to manage politicians, how to arrange demonstrations.
One of the first things she advised them to do was to establish
a headquarters in a conspicuous place, and to get up a great
demonstration of women to march in a body to the Winter Palace or
the Tauride Palace, wherever the Provisional Government was holding
its meetings at the time. They should offer their services to the
government, and let the country see that women were in the field to
support the war. That speech and that program swept the women off their
feet. Immediate steps were taken to organize, and a few women, without
waiting for organization, actually did go out into the streets and talk
against the Bolsheviki.
Then came the days of the July revolution when all street speaking
ceased, and that interfered with the women’s plan. What discouraged
it most of all was Kerensky’s cynical attitude toward it. A woman of
rank and of great ability, knowing Kerensky well, went to him and told
him what they proposed to do, and asked for his coöperation. To her
astonishment he refused point blank and he told her that the women
would not be allowed to make a demonstration or to march to the palace.
Naturally she asked him why, and he replied evasively that there had
been too many demonstrations already.
Ambassador Francis shared the women’s disappointment to the extent
of calling on Kerensky and trying to make him see the value of their
assistance in an hour of crisis, but Kerensky persisted in his refusal.
I do not understand why he acted in this manner. His own domestic
affairs were in a sad state at this time, a rumor stating that Mme.
Kerenskaia was divorcing her famous husband. It may be that Kerensky
was in a state of mind of general prejudice against all women. Perhaps
he has the Napoleonic conception of the position of women in the state.
I do not know. But if he is an anti-suffragist he is almost alone in
his opinion in Russia. Mrs. Pankhurst did not have to convert the
country to suffrage. There is no spoken opposition to it anywhere,
as far as I could discover. It is taken for granted that women will
vote under the new constitution. They have voted already in municipal
elections, and in many cities they have been elected to the town dumas.
Fourteen women were elected to the Moscow town duma last summer.
Neither is Russia opposed to militant suffragism. Mrs. Pankhurst
was a guest of honor one night at the great congress of Cossacks in
Petrograd. When she appeared on the platform she received an ovation,
and Prof. Miliukoff’s introduction of the famous Englishwoman was a
high eulogy. Mrs. Pankhurst’s autobiography has been translated into
Russian and is widely circulated. Her mission failed because Kerensky
killed it. That is all. Her visit to Russia was not a complete failure,
however, for she succeeded in awakening at least one group of Russian
women to a keen sense of their political responsibilities. They have
begun to work, and when order is restored in the country, their work
will be heard of.
They told her in my hearing that they had never before realized what
was before them, and they did not intend that the new constitution
should be written by any but the best men in Russia. Much can be
expected of Russian women in the future, in my opinion.
Among the working people the women have shown themselves to be at least
as ready for citizenship as the men. They appear among the Bolsheviki,
of course, and they are seen among the slackers in industry. But one
group of women workers played a loyal part throughout the February
revolution and in the after troubles. This was the telephone force,
especially the girls in the big central office in the Morskaia. These
girls, without any direction or orders, joined in an absolute refusal
to connect the headquarters of the Bolsheviki in the dancer’s palace on
the Neva, or the munitions factory which was their other stronghold.
Cut off from using the telephone the mutinous soldiers and workmen were
severely handicapped, and the government was materially assisted.
Women of the educated classes will play an important part in the
reconstruction of Russia. They will hold office, and may sit in the
ministry. Already one woman has been appointed adjunct Minister of
Public Welfare. This was the well known and efficient Countess Panine,
whose civic work is famous throughout the empire. Countess Panine held
office for a short time only, because no ministry held together long.
That she will be returned to office when stability is secured, there
seems to be no doubt.