was formed in London. It was not an offshoot from any existing woman's
suffrage society, but represented a crystallization of new elements. For
the most part, even its leaders had not previously taken any active part
in the movement for woman's suffrage. The suffrage movement had need of
exactly such an infusion of fresh and ardent blood; so that the new
society was warmly welcomed, and met with immediate success, finding
recruits alike among the rich and the poor. Its unconventional methods,
its eager and militant spirit, were felt to supply a lacking element,
and the first picturesque and dashing exploits of the Union were on the
whole well received. The obvious sincerity and earnestness of these very
fresh recruits covered the rashness of their new and rather ignorant
enthusiasm.
But a hasty excess of ardour only befits a first uncalculated outburst
of youthfulness. It is quite another matter when it is deliberately
hardened into a rigid routine, and becomes an organized method of
creating disorder for the purpose of advertising a grievance in season
and out of season. Since, moreover, the attack was directed chiefly
against politicians, precisely that class of the community most inclined
to be favourable to woman's suffrage, the wrong-headedness of the
movement becomes as striking as its offensiveness.
The effect on the early friends of the new movement was inevitable.
Some, who had hailed it with enthusiasm and proclaimed its pioneers as
new Joans of Arc, changed their tone to expostulation and protest, and
finally relapsed into silence. Other friends of the movement, even among
its former leaders, were less silent. They have revealed to the world,
too unkindly, some of the influences which slowly corrupt such a
movement from the inside when it hardens into sectarianism: the
narrowing of aim, the increase of conventionality, the jealousy of
rivals, the tendency to morbid emotionalism.
It is easy to exaggerate the misdeeds and the weaknesses of the
suffragettes. It is undoubtedly true that they have alienated, in an
increasing degree, the sympathies of the women of highest character and
best abilities among the advocates of woman's suffrage. Nearly all
Englishwomen to-day who stand well above the average in mental
distinction are in favour of woman's suffrage, though they may not
always be inclined to take an active part in securing it. Perhaps the
only prominent exception is Mrs. Humphry Ward. Yet they rarely associate
themselves with the methods of the suffragettes. They do not, indeed,
protest, for they feel there would be a kind of disloyalty in fighting
against the Extreme Left of a movement to which they themselves belong;
but they stand aloof. The women who are chiefly attracted to the ranks
of the suffragettes belong to three classes: (1) Those of the well-to-do
class with no outlet for their activities, who eagerly embrace an
exciting occupation which has become, not only highly respectable, but
even, in a sense, fashionable; they have no natural tendency to excess,
but are easily moved by their social environment; some of these are
rich, and the great principle--once formulated in an unhappy moment
concerning a rich lady interested in social reform--"We must not kill
the goose that lays the golden eggs," has never been despised by the
suffragette leaders; (2) the rowdy element among women which is not so
much moved to adopt the methods for the sake of the cause as to adopt
the cause for the sake of the methods, so that in the case of their
special emotional temperament it may be said, reversing an ancient
phrase, that the means justify the end; this element of noisy
explosiveness, always found in a certain proportion of women, though
latent under ordinary circumstances, is easily aroused by stimulation,
and in every popular revolt the wildest excesses are the acts of women.
(3) In this small but important group we find women of rare and
beautiful character who, hypnotized by the enthralling influence of an
idea, and often having no great intellectual power of their own, are
even unconscious of the vulgarity that accompanies them, and gladly
sacrifice themselves to a cause that seems to be sacred; these are the
saints and martyrs of every movement.
When we thus analyse the suffragette outburst we see that it is really
compounded out of quite varied elements: a conventionally respectable
element, a rowdy element, and an ennobling element. It is, therefore,
equally unreasonable to denounce its vices or to idealize its virtues.
It is more profitable to attempt to balance its services and its
disservices to the cause of women's suffrage.
Looked at dispassionately, the two main disadvantages of the suffragette
agitation--and they certainly seem at the first glance very
comprehensive objections--lie in its direction and in its methods. There
are two vast bodies of people who require to be persuaded in order to
secure woman's suffrage: first women themselves, and secondly their
men-folk, who at present monopolize the franchise. Until the majority of
both men and women are educated to understand the justice and
reasonableness of this step, and until men are persuaded that the time
has come for practical action, the most violent personal assaults on
cabinet ministers--supposing such political methods to be otherwise
unobjectionable--are beside the mark. They are aimed in the wrong
direction. This is so even when we leave aside the fact that
politicians are sufficiently converted already. The primary task of
women suffragists is to convert their own sex. Indeed it may be said
that that is their whole task. Whenever the majority of women are
persuaded that they ought to possess the vote, we may be quite sure that
they will communicate that persuasion to their men-folk who are able to
give them the vote. The conversion of the majority of women to a belief
in women's suffrage is essential to its attainment because it is only by
the influence of the women who belong to him, whom he knows and loves
and respects, that the average man is likely to realize that, as Ellen
Key puts it, "a ballot paper in itself no more injures the delicacy of a
woman's hand than a cooking recipe." The antics of women in the street,
however earnest those women may be, only leave him indifferent, even
hostile, at most, amused.
It may be added that in any case it would be undesirable, even if
possible, to bestow the suffrage on women so long as only a minority
have the wish to exercise it. It would be contrary to sound public
policy. It would not only discredit political rights, but it would tend
to give the woman's vote too narrow and one-sided a character. To grant
women the right to vote is a different matter from granting women the
right to enter a profession. In order to give women the right to be
doctors or lawyers it is not necessary that women generally should be
convinced of the advantage of such a step. The matter chiefly concerns
the very small number of women who desire the privilege. But the women
who vote will be in some measure legislating for women generally, and it
is therefore necessary that women generally should participate.
But even if it is admitted--although, as we have seen, there is a
twofold reason for not making such an admission--that the suffragettes
are justified in regarding politicians as the obstacles in the way of
their demands, there still remains the question of the disadvantage of
their method. This method is by some euphemistically described as the
introduction of "nagging" into politics; but even at this mild estimate
of its character the question may still be asked whether the method is
calculated to attain the desired end. One hears women suffragettes
declare that this is the only kind of argument men understand. There is,
however, in the masculine mind--and by no means least when it is
British--an element which strongly objects to be worried and bullied
even into a good course of action. The suffragettes have done their best
to stimulate that element of obstinacy. Even among men who viewed the
matter from an unprejudiced standpoint many felt that, necessary as
woman's suffrage is, the policy of the suffragettes rendered the moment
unfavourable for its adoption. It is a significant fact that in the
countries which have so far granted women the franchise no methods in
the slightest degree resembling those of the suffragettes have ever been
practised. It is not easy to imagine Australia tolerating such methods,
and in Finland full Parliamentary rights were freely granted, as is
generally recognized, precisely as a mark of gratitude for women's
helpfulness in standing side by side with their men in a great political
struggle. The policy of obstruction adopted by the English suffragettes,
with its "tactics" of opposing at election times the candidates of the
very party whose leaders they are imploring to grant them the franchise,
was so foolish that it is little wonder that many doubted whether women
at all understand the methods of politics, or are yet fitted to take a
responsible part in political life.
The suffragette method of persuading public men seems to be, on the
whole, futile, even if it were directed at the proper quarter, and even
if it were in itself a justifiable method. But it would be possible to
grant these "ifs" and still to feel that a serious injury is done to the
cause of woman's suffrage when the method of violence is adopted by
women. Some suffragettes have argued, in this matter, that in political
crises men also have acted just as badly or worse. But, even if we
assume that this is the case,[57] it has been one of the chief arguments
hitherto for the admission of women into political life that they
exercise an elevating and refining influence, so that their entrance
into this field will serve to purify politics. That, no doubt, is an
argument mostly brought forward by men, and may be regarded as, in some
measure, an amiable masculine delusion, since most of the refining and
elevating elements in civilization probably owe their origin not to
women but to men. But it is not altogether a delusion. In the virtues of
force--however humbly those virtues are to be classed--women, as a sex,
can never be the rivals of men, and when women attempt to gain their
ends by the demonstration of brute force they can only place themselves
at a disadvantage. They are laying down the weapons they know best how
to use, and adopting weapons so unsuitable that they only injure the
users.
Many women, speaking on behalf of the suffragettes, protest against the
idea that women must always be "charming." And if "charm" is to be
understood in so narrow and conventionalized a sense that it means
something which is incompatible with the developed natural activities,
whether of the soul or of the body, then such a protest is amply
justified. But in the larger sense, "charm"--which means the power to
effect work without employing brute force--is indispensable to women.
Charm is a woman's strength just as strength is a man's charm. And the
justification for women in this matter is that herein they represent the
progress of civilization. All civilization involves the substitution in
this respect of the woman's method for the man's. In the last resort a
savage can only assert his rights by brute force. But with the growth of
civilization the wronged man, instead of knocking down his opponent,
employs "charm"; in other words he engages an advocate, who, by the
exercise of sweet reasonableness, persuades twelve men in a box that
his wrongs must be righted, and the matter is then finally settled, not
by man's weapon, the fist, but by woman's weapon, the tongue. Nowadays
the same method of "charm" is being substituted for brute force in
international wrongs, and with the complete substitution of arbitration
for war the woman's method of charm will have replaced the man's method
of brute force along the whole line of legitimate human activity. If we
realize this we can understand why it is that a group of women who, even
in the effort to support a good cause, revert to the crude method of
violence are committing a double wrong. They are wronging their own sex
by proving false to its best traditions, and they are wronging
civilization by attempting to revive methods of savagery which it is
civilization's mission to repress. Therefore it may fairly be held that
even if the methods of the suffragettes were really adequate to secure
women's suffrage, the attainment of the franchise by those methods would
be a misfortune. The ultimate loss would be greater than the gain.
If we hold the foregoing considerations in mind it is difficult to avoid
the conclusion that neither in their direction nor in their nature are
the methods of the suffragettes fitted to attain the end desired. We
have still, however, to consider the other side of the question.
Whenever an old movement receives a strong infusion of new blood,
whatever excesses or mistakes may arise, it is very unlikely that all
the results will be on the same side. It is certainly not so in this
case. Even the opposition to woman's suffrage which the suffragettes
are responsible for, and the Anti-Suffrage societies which they have
called into active existence, are not an unmitigated disadvantage. Every
movement of progress requires a vigorous movement of opposition to
stimulate its progress, and the clash of discussion can only be
beneficial in the end to the progressive cause.
But the immense advantage of the activity of the suffragettes has been
indirect. It has enabled the great mass of ordinary sensible women who
neither join Suffrage societies nor Anti-Suffrage societies to think for
themselves on this question. Until a few years ago, while most educated
women were vaguely aware of the existence of a movement for giving women
the vote, they only knew of it as something rather unpractical and
remote; its reality had never been brought home to them. When women
witnessed the eruption into the streets of a band of women--most of them
apparently women much like themselves--who were so convinced that the
franchise must be granted to women, here and now, that they were
prepared to face publicity, ridicule, and even imprisonment, then "votes
for women" became to them, for the first time, a real and living issue.
In a great many cases, certainly, they realized that they intensely
disliked the people who behaved in this way and any cause that was so
preached. But in a great many other cases they realized, for the first
time definitely, that the demand of votes for women was a reasonable
demand, and that they were themselves suffragists, though they had no
wish to take an active part in the movement, and no real sympathy with
its more "militant" methods. There can be no doubt that in this way the
suffragettes have performed an immense service for the cause of women's
suffrage. It has been for the most part an indirect and undesigned
service, but in the end it will perhaps more than serve to
counterbalance the disadvantages attached to their more conscious
methods and their more deliberate aims.
If, as we may trust, this service will be the main outcome of the
suffragette phase of the women's movement, it is an outcome to be
thankful for; we may then remember with gratitude the ardent enthusiasm
of the suffragettes and forget the foolish and futile ways in which it
was manifested. There has never been any doubt as to the ultimate
adoption of women's suffrage; its gradual extension among the more
progressive countries of the world sufficiently indicates that it will
ultimately reach even to the most backward countries. Its accomplishment
in England has been gradual, although it is here so long since the first
steps were taken, not because there has been some special and malignant
opposition to it on the part of men in general and politicians in
particular, but simply because England is an old and conservative
country, with a very ancient constitutional machinery which effectually
guards against the hasty realization of any scheme of reform. This
particular reform, however, is not an isolated or independent scheme; it
is an essential part of a great movement in the social equalization of
the sexes which has been going on for centuries in our civilization, a
movement such as may be correspondingly traced in the later stages of
the civilizations of antiquity. Such a movement we may by our efforts
help forward, we may for a while retard, but it is a part of
civilization, and it would be idle to imagine that we can affect the
ultimate issue.
That the issue of women's suffrage may be reached in England within a
reasonable period is much to be desired for the sake of the woman's
movement in the larger sense, which has nothing to do with politics, and
is now impeded by this struggle. The enfranchisement of women, Miss
Frances Cobbe declared thirty years ago, is "the crown and completion"
of all progress in women's movement. "Votes for women," exclaims, more
youthfully but not less unreasonably, Miss Christabel Pankhurst, "means
a new Heaven and a new Earth." But women's suffrage no more means a new
Heaven or even a new Earth than it means, as other people fear, a new
Purgatory and a new Hell. We may see this quite plainly in Australasia.
Women's votes aid in furthering social legislation and contribute to the
passing of acts which have their good side, and, no doubt, like
everything else, their bad side. As Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who devoted
her life to the political enfranchisement of women, declared, the ballot
is, at most, only the vestibule to women's emancipation. Man's suffrage
has not introduced the millennium, and it is foolish to suppose that
woman's suffrage can. It is merely an act of justice and a reasonable
condition of social hygiene.
The attainment of the suffrage, if it is a beginning and not an end,
will thus have a real and positive value in liberating the woman's
movement from a narrow and sterilizing phase of its course. In England,
especially, the woman's movement has in the past largely confined itself
to imitating men and to obtaining the same work and the same rights as
men. Putting the matter more broadly, it may be said that it has been
the aim of the woman's movement to secure woman's claims as a human
being rather than as woman. But that is only half the task of the
woman's movement, and perhaps not the most essential half. Women can
never be like men, any more than men can be like women. It is their
unlikeness which renders them indispensable to each other, and which
also makes it imperative that each sex should have its due share in
moulding the conditions of life. Woman's function in life can never be
the same as man's, if only because women are the mothers of the race.
That is the point, the only point, at which women have an uncontested
supremacy over men. The most vital problem before our civilization
to-day is the problem of motherhood, the question of creating the human
beings best fitted for modern life, the practical realization of a sound
eugenics. Manouvrier, the distinguished anthropologist, who carries
feminism to its extreme point in the scientific sphere, yet recognizes
the fundamental fact that "a woman's part is to make children." But he
clearly perceives also that "in all its extent and all its consequences
that part is not surpassed in importance, in difficulty, or in dignity,
by the man's part." On the contrary it is a part which needs "an amount
of intelligence incontestably superior, and by far, to that required by
most masculine occupations."[58] We are here at the core of the woman's
movement. And the full fruition of that movement means that women, by
virtue of their supremacy in this matter, shall take their proper share
in legislation for life, not as mere sexless human beings, but as women,
and in accordance with the essential laws of their own nature as women.
II
There is a further question. Is it possible to discern the actual
embodiment of this new phase of the woman movement? I think it is.
To those who are accustomed to watch the emotional pulse of mankind,
nothing has seemed so remarkable during recent years as the eruption of
sex questions in Germany. We had always been given to understand that
the sphere of women and the laws of marriage had been definitely
prescribed and fixed in Germany for at least two thousand years, since
the days of Tacitus, in fact, and with the best possible results.
Germans assured the world in stentorian tones that only in Germany could
young womanhood be seen in all its purity, and that in the German
_Hausfrau_ the supreme ideal had been reached, the woman whose great
mission is to keep alive the perennial fire of the ancient German
hearth. Here and there, indeed, the quiet voice of science was heard in
Germany; thus Schrader, the distinguished investigator of Teutonic
origins, in commenting on the oft-quoted testimony of Tacitus to the
chastity of the German women, has appositely referred to the detailed
evidences furnished by the Committee of pastors of the Evangelical
Church as to the extreme prevalence of unchastity among the women of
rural Germany, and argued that these widespread customs must be very
ancient and deep-rooted.[59] But Germans in general refused to admit that
Tacitus had only used the idea of German virtue as a stick to beat his
own fellow-countrywomen with.
The Social-Democratic movement, which has so largely overspread
industrial and even intellectual Germany, prepared the way for a less
traditional and idealistic way of feeling in regard to these questions.
The publication by Bebel of a book, _Die Frau_, in which the leader of
the German Social-Democratic party set forth the Socialist doctrine of
the position of women in society, marked the first stage in the new
movement. This book exercised a wide influence, more especially on
uncritical readers. It is, indeed, from a scientific point of view a
worthless book--if a book in which genuine emotions are brought to the
cause of human freedom and social righteousness may ever be so
termed--but it struck a rude blow at the traditions of Teutonic
sentiment. With something of the rough tone and temper of the great
peasant who initiated the German Reformation, a man who had himself
sprung from the people, and who knew of what he was speaking, here set
down in downright fashion the actual facts as to the position of women
in Germany, as well as what he conceived to be the claims of justice in
regard to that position, slashing with equal vigour alike at the
absurdities of conventional marriage and of prostitution, the obverse
and the reverse, he declared, of a false society. The emotional
renaissance with which we are here concerned seems to have no special
and certainly no exclusive association with the Social-Democratic
movement, but it can scarcely be doubted that the permeation of a great
mass of the German people by the socialistic conceptions which in their
bearing on women have been rendered so familiar by Bebel's exposition
has furnished, as it were, a ready-made sounding-board which has given
resonance and effect to voices which might otherwise have been quickly
lost in vacuity.