POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT AND NATIONAL POLITICS
‘Well done, New Zealand! I expect I shall live to have a vote.’--E.
M. I., 1891.
‘I envy not in any mood
The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods.’
‘So the vote has come! and for our work. Fancy its having taken the
war to show them how ready we were to work! Or even to show that
that work was necessary. Where do they think the world would have
been without women’s work all these ages?’--E. M. I., Reni, Russia,
June 1917.
Mr. David Inglis, writing to his son on his marriage in 1845, says:--
‘I cannot express the deep interest, or the ardent hopes with which
my bosom is filled on the occasion, or the earnest though humble
prayer to the Giver of all good which it has uttered that He may shed
abundantly upon you _both_ the rich mercies of His grace: with those
feelings I take each of you to my heart, and give you my parental
love and blessing. You have told me enough of the object of your fond
choice to make her henceforth dear to me, to all of us, on her own
account, as well as yours.
‘And here, my beloved David, I would turn for a moment more
immediately to yourself, as being now in a situation very different
from that in which you have hitherto been placed. As a husband, then,
it will now behove you to remember that you are not your own exclusive
property--that for a single moment you must never forget; the tender
love and affectionate respect and consideration which are due from you
to the amiable individual who has bestowed on you her hand and heart,
it will, I assure myself, be your pleasing duty to prove, by unceasing
attention to, and solicitude for, her every wish how dearly you
appreciate her worth, as well as _gift_; and that her future comfort
and happiness will invariably possess an estimation in your view
paramount to every feeling that can more immediately or personally
affect yourself. Let such be manifest in your every act, as connected
with every object in which _she_ is concerned. Her love and affection
for you will then be reciprocal and pure and lasting, and thus will
you become to each other what, under God’s blessing, you are meant to
be--a mutual comfort and an abiding stay. Make her the confidential
friend of your bosom, to whom its every thought must unreservedly
be imparted--the soother of all its cares, its anxieties, and
disappointments, when they chance to arise; the fond participator in
all your happiness and joys, from whatever source they may spring--you
will thus be discharging a duty which your sacred obligations at the
altar have entailed upon you.’
This letter has been quoted with its phrasing of seventy years ago,
because it shows an advanced outlook on the position of husband and
wife, and the setting forth of their equality and the respect paid to
their several positions. It may have influenced Mr. Inglis’ views, both
in his perfect relations with his wife and the sympathetic liberty of
thought and action which he encouraged in his own family.
This chapter is devoted to the political and public life of Elsie
Inglis. It can be written in a fortunate hour. The ‘common cause’
to which she gave so much of her life has now been won. The tumult
and the turmoil are now hushed in peace and security. The age which
began in John Stuart Mill’s ‘Subjection of Women’ has ended in the
Representation of the People’s Bill. It is possible to review the
political period of the generation which produced Elsie Inglis, and her
comrades in the struggle against the disqualification of sex, without
raising any fresh controversy.
We may safely say that Dr. Inglis was one of the finest types of
women produced by the ideals and inspiring purposes of the generation
to which she belonged. She was born when a woman was the reigning
Sovereign, and when her influence and power were at its height.
Four years after her birth the Reform Bill of 1868 was to make the
first claim for women as citizens in the British Parliament. The
Married Woman’s Property Act, and the laws affecting Divorce, had
recognised them as something else than the goods and chattels or
the playthings and bondwomen of the ‘predominant partner.’ Mary
Somerville had convinced the world that a woman could have a brain.
Timidly, and yet resolutely, women were claiming a higher education,
and Universities were slamming to their doors, with a petty horde
of maxims claimed to be based on divine authority. Women pioneers
mounted platforms and asserted ‘Rights,’ and qualified for jealously
closed professions--always, from the first, upheld and companied by
‘Greathearts,’ men few but chosen, who, like John Inglis, recognised
that no community was the stronger for keeping its people, be they
black or white, male or female, in any form of ignorance or bonded
serfdom.
As Elsie grew up, she found herself walking in the new age. Doors
were set ajar, if not fully opened. The first wave of ridicule and of
conscientious objections had spent its force. A girl’s school might
play games decorously and not lose all genteel deportment. Girls might
show a love of knowledge, and no longer be hooted as blue-stockings.
The use of the globes and cross-stitch gave place to learning which
might fit them to be educated, and useful members of the community.
Ill-health ceased to be considered part of the curse of Eve, to
be borne with swooning resignation on the wide sofas of the early
Victorian Age. Ignorance and innocence were not recognised as twin
sisters, and women, having eaten of the tree of knowledge, looked round
a world which prided itself on giving equal justice to all men, and
discovered that very often that axiom covered a multitude of sins of
injustice against all womankind.
It was through Elsie’s professional life that she learnt to know how
often the law was against the woman’s best interests, and it was always
in connection with some reform that she longed to initiate, that she
expressed a desire for the Vote.
_To her Father_
‘GLASGOW, 1891.
‘Many thanks for your letter about women’s rights. You are ahead of
all the world in everything, and they gradually come up into line with
you--the Westminster Confession and everything except Home Rule! The
amusing thing about women preaching is that they do it, but as it is
not in the churches it is not supposed to be in opposition to Paul.
They are having lots of meetings in the hall downstairs; every single
one of them is addressed by a woman. But, of course, they could not
give the same address in a church and with men listening! At Queen
Margaret’s here, they are having a course of lectures on the Old
Testament from the lecturer on that subject in the University, but
then, of course it is not “Divinity.”’
The opponents to Woman’s Franchise admittedly occupied an illogical
position, and Elsie’s abounding sense of humour never failed to make
use of all the opportunities of laughter which the many absurdities of
the long fight evoked. No one with that sense as highly developed could
ever turn cynical or bitter. It was only when cruelty and injustice
came under her ken that a fine scorn dominated her thought and speech.
She gives to her father some of these instances:--
‘I got a paper to sign to thank the M.P.’s who voted for Sir A.
Rollitt’s Woman’s Suffrage Bill. I got it filled up in half a minute.
I wish she had sent half a dozen. There is no question among women
who have to work for themselves about wanting the suffrage. It is the
women who are safe and sound in their own drawing-rooms who don’t see
what on earth they want it for.
‘I have just been so angry! A woman came in yesterday very ill. A.
took down her case, and thought she would have to have an operation.
Then her husband arrived, and calmly said she was to go home, because
he could not look after the children. So I said that if she went she
went on her own responsibility, for I would not give my consent. He
said the baby was ill. I said, “Well, take it to a hospital.” Then it
turned out it was not ill, but had cried last night. I said I saw very
well what it was, that he had had a bad night, and had just determined
that his wife should have the bad night to-night, even though she was
ill, instead of him. He did look ashamed of himself, selfish cad!
Helpless creature, he could not even arrange for some one to come in
and take charge of those children unless his wife went home to do it.
She had got some one yesterday, but he had had a row with her. I gave
him my mind pretty clearly, but I went in just now to find she had
gone. I said she was stupid. So one woman said, “It was not ’er fault,
Miss; ’e would have it.”
‘I wonder when married women will learn they have any other duty
in the world than to obey their husbands. They were not even her
children--they were step-children. You don’t know what trouble we
have here with the husbands. They will come in the day before the
operation, after the woman has been screwed up to it, and worry them
with all sorts of outside things, and want them home when they are
half dying. Any idea that anybody is to be thought of but themselves
never enters their lordly minds, and the worst of it is these stupid
idiots of women don’t seem to think so either: “’E wants it, Miss,”
settles the question. I always say--“It does not matter one fig what
he wants. The question is what you want.” They don’t seem to think
they have any right to any individual existence. Well, I feel better
now, but I wish I could have scragged that beast. I have to go to the
wards now!
‘We had another row with a tyrannical husband. I did not know whether
to be most angry with him or his fool of a wife. She had one of the
most painful things anybody can have, an abscess in her breast. It was
so bad Miss Webb would not do anything for it in the out-patients’,
but said she was to come in at once. The woman said she would go and
arrange for somebody to look after her baby and come back at six. At
six appeared her lord and master. “_I_ cannot let my wife come in,
as the baby is not old enough to be left with anybody else.” Did you
ever hear anything so monstrous? That one human being is to settle
for another human being whether she is to be cured or not. I asked
him whether he knew how painful it was, and if he had to bear the
pain. Miss Webb appealed to him, that he _was_ responsible for his
wife’s health, for he seemed to assume he was not. Both grounds were
far above his intellect, either his responsibility or his wife’s
rights. He just stood there like an obstinate mule. We told him it
was positively brutal, and that he was to go _at once_ and get a good
doctor home with him if he would not let her in. Of course, he did not.
‘What a fool the woman must have been to have educated him up to that.
There really was no necessity for her to stay out because he said she
was to--poor thing. Miss Webb and I have struck up a great friendship
as the result. After we had both fumed about for some time, I said,
“Well, the only way to educate that kind of man, or that kind of
woman, is to get the franchise.” Miss Webb said, “Bravo, bravo,” then
I found she was a great franchise woman, and has been having terrible
difficulties with her L.W.A. here.’
The writer may add one more to these instances. Suffrage meetings
were of a necessity much alike, and the round of argument was much
the same. Spade-work had to be done among men and women who had the
mental outlook of these patients and the overlords of their destiny.
Meetings were rarely enthusiastic or crowded, and it was often like
speaking into the heart of a pincushion. To one of these meetings Dr.
Inglis came by train straight from her practice. In memory’s halls all
meetings are alike, but one stands out, where Dr. Inglis illustrated
her argument by a fact in her day’s experience. The law does not permit
an operation on a married woman without her husband’s consent. That day
the consent had been refused, and the woman was to be left to lingering
suffering from which only death could release her. The voice and the
thrill which pervaded speaker and audience as Dr. Inglis told the tale
and pointed the moral, remains an abiding memory.
Her politics were Liberal, and, what was more remarkable, she was
a convinced Home Ruler. Those who believe that women in politics
naturally take the line of the home, may find here a very strong
instance of the independent mind, producing no rift within the lute
that sounded such a perfect note of unison between her and the
prevailing influence of her youth. Mr. Inglis had done his work in
India, and his politics were of an Imperialist rather than that of a
‘Home Ruler All Round.’ When Mr. Gladstone introduced his Home Rule
Bill of 1893, Elsie complains of the obstructive talk in Parliament.
Mr. Inglis gently says she seems to wish it passed without discussion.
Elsie replies on the points she thinks salient and likely to work, and
wonders why they should not commend themselves to sense and not words.
The family have recollections of long and not acrimonious debates well
sustained on either side.
She was a member of the W.L.F., and was always impatient of the way
Party was placed before the Franchise.
‘I was sorry to see how the Suffrage question was pushed into the
background by Lady Aberdeen. However, I shall stick to the Federation,
and bring them to their senses on that point as far as my influence
goes. It is simply sham Liberalism that will not recognise that it is
a real Liberal question (1893).
‘That is a capital letter of Miss M‘Laren’s. It is quite true, and
women are awful fools to truckle to their party, instead of putting
their foot down, about the Franchise. You would certainly hear more
about wife murders than you do at present, if the women had a vote.
‘Do you know what they said at the Liberal Club the other day in
answer to some deputation, or appeal, or rather it was said, in the
discussion, that the Liberal Party would do all they could to remedy
abuses and give women justice, but the vote they would not give,
because they would put a power into women’s hand which could never be
taken away. Plain speaking, was it not?
‘Did I tell you that I have to speak at a drawing-room meeting on
Woman’s Suffrage? Mrs. Elmy asked me to. I had just refused to write
a paper for her on the present state of medical education in the
country, for I thought that would be too great cheek in a house
surgeon, so I did not like to refuse the other.
‘The drawing-room meeting yesterday was very good. I got there late,
and found a fearfully and awfully fashionable audience being harangued
by a very smart-looking man, who spoke uncommonly well, and was saying
everything I meant to say.
‘Mrs. Elmy smiled and nodded away to me, and suddenly it flashed on
me that I was to second the motion this man was speaking to. I was
in such an awful funk that I got cool, and got up and told them that
I did not think Mr. Wilkins had left any single thing for me to say;
however, as things struck people in different ways I should simply
tell them how it struck me, and then went ahead with what I meant to
say when I got in. Mrs. Elmy was quite pleased, and several people
came up afterwards, and said I had got on all right. Mrs. Elmy said,
I had not repeated Mr. W., only emphasised him. He was such a fluent
speaker, he scared me awfully.’
The decade that saw the controversy of Home Rule for Ireland, was the
first that brought women prominently into political organisations. Many
women’s associations were formed, and the religious aspect as between
Ulster and the South interested many very deeply. Elsie was not a
Liberal-Unionist, and, as she states her case to her father, there is
much that shows that she was thinking the matter out for herself, on
lines which were then fresher than they are to-day.
From Glasgow, in 1891, she writes:--
‘I have spent a wicked Sunday. I read all the morning, and then went
up to the Infirmary to bandage with Dr. D. Dr. T. says I am quite
sure to be plucked, after such worldliness. I have discovered he is
an Australian from Victoria. Dr. D. is an Aberdeen man and a great
admirer of George Smith. Also, a violent Home Ruler. Never mind about
the agricultural labourer, Papa dear! I am afraid Gladstone’s majority
won’t be a working one, and we shall have the whole row over again in
six months. Dr. D. says every available voter has been seized by the
scruff of his neck and made to vote this time. And, six months hence
there’ll be no fresh light on the situation, and we’ll be where we
are now. I should not wonder if the whole thing makes us devise some
plan for one Imperial Parliament and local government for Ireland,
Scotland, and the Colonies, ending in making the integrity of the
Empire “and unity of the English speaking race” more apparent than it
is now, _and_ with the Irish contented and managing their own affairs
in their own mad way. Our future trouble is with the Labour Party.
‘Mr. Gladstone has been so engrossed with his H.R. measure that he
does not seem to have noticed these other questions that have been
quickly growing, and he has made two big blunders about Woman’s
Suffrage and the Labour question. I have no doubt these men are
talking a lot of nonsense, and are trying for impossibilities, but
there is a great deal of sense in what they say. It is no good
shutting our eyes to the facts they bring forward.
‘As to Mr. D., I am very much afraid you would not agree with him. He
is a rank Socialist. The only point in which he agrees with you is
that he would make everybody do what he thinks right. Only his ideas
of right are very different from yours. He believes in an eight-hour
day, local option, and State-owned mines. His chief amusement at
present is arguing with me. He generally gets angry, and says, “I
argue like a woman,” but he always pluckily begins again. He was a
tradesman, and gave it up because he says you cannot be an honest
tradesman nowadays. He is studying medicine; the last day I worked
at “brains” he rampaged about the room arguing about the unearned
increment. I tell him he must come and argue in Edinburgh--I have not
time at present.
‘I will tell you what I think of the Home Rule Bill to-morrow--that is
to say, if I have time to read it. It is really a case of officers and
men here just now. I can’t say “go on” instead of “come on.” I cannot
order cold spongings and hot fomentations by the dozen and then sit in
my room and read the newspapers, can I?’
‘GLASGOW, _May 1892_.
‘What do you think of Lord Salisbury’s speech, inciting to rebellion
and civil war? Now, don’t think of it as Lord Salisbury and Ulster,
but think of it as advice given by Mr. Gladstone to the rest of
Ireland. If you like to take the lead into your own hands and march on
Dublin; I don’t know that any Government would care to use the forces
of the Crown against you. You will be quite justified because the
Government of your country is in the hands of your hereditary foes.
There is only one good point in Lord Salisbury’s speech, and that is
that he does not sham that the Ulster men are Irishmen. He calls them
a colony from this country. Lord S. must have been feeling desperate
before he made that speech.’
‘_1894_.
‘I think Mr. Chamberlain’s speech was very clever. It was this special
Home Rule Bill he pulled to pieces, and one could not help feeling
that that would have been the result whatever the Bill had been, if
it had been introduced by anybody but Mr. C. His argument seemed to
be in favour of Imperial Federation, as far as I could make out. I
have no doubt the Bill can be very much improved in committee, but
the groundwork of it is all right. The two Houses and the gradual
giving over of the police and land, when they have had time to find
their feet. As to the retaining the Irish members in Parliament being
totally illogical, there is nothing in that; we always make illogical
things work. And the Irish members must stay.
‘I _do_ like Mr. Balfour. He is so honest. I expect he hates the
Irish Party as much as any man, but he spoke up for them all the
same. If he had not, I don’t believe Mr. Chamberlain and some of the
others would have spoken as they did. The Conservative Party was quite
inclined to laugh at the paid stipendiaries until Mr. Balfour spoke.
‘I have been reading up the Bishop of Chester’s scheme and the Direct
Veto Bill. I don’t like his scheme. It would be very nice to turn
all the pubs into coffee-houses, but a big company over whom the
ratepayers have no control would be just as likely to do what would
pay best, as the tramway companies now, who work their men seventeen
hours and their horses three, at a stretch. It would be quite a
different thing to put the pubs under the Town and County Councils. As
to this Bill it is not to stop people drinking, but simply to shut up
pubs. A man can still buy his whisky and get drunk in his own house,
but a community says, “We won’t have the nuisance of a pub at every
corner,” and I am not sure that they have not that right, just as much
as the private individual has to get drunk if he chooses. A great
many men would keep straight if the temptation were not thrown in
their faces. The system of licences was instituted for the good of the
public, not the good of the publican.
‘The Elections will be three weeks after my exam. Dearest Papa!--There
is as much chance of Mr. Gladstone being beaten in Midlothian as there
is of a Conservative majority.’
Another friend writes:--
‘I should like to send you a recollection of her in the early
Nineties. My friend, Dr. Jessie MacGregor, wrote to my home in
Rothesay, asking us to put up Dr. Inglis, who was to give an address
at a Sanitary Congress to be held there. It was, I believe, her first
public appearance, and she did do well. One woman alone on a platform
filled with well-known doctors from all parts! Her subject was
advocating women as sanitary inspectors. She was one of the pioneers
in that movement also. I can well remember her, a slim little girl in
black, fearless as ever, doing her part. After she had finished, there
was a running criticism of her subject. Many against her view, few for
the cause on which she was speaking. It was an unique experience. The
discussion got quite hot. One well-known doctor asked us to picture
his dear friend Elsie Inglis carrying out a six-foot smallpox patient.
‘I think she was the first lady medical to speak at a Congress. It was
such a pleasure to entertain her, she was so quiet and unobtrusive,
and yet so humorous. I never met her again, but I could never forget
her, though we were just like ships that pass in the night.’
One of her Suffrage organisers, Miss Bury, gives a vivid picture of her
work in the Suffrage cause:--
‘It was Dr. Elsie Inglis who brought me to Scotland, and sent me to
organise Suffrage societies in the Highlands. I speak of her as I knew
her, the best of chiefs, so kind and encouraging and appreciative of
one’s efforts, even when they were not always crowned with success.
I remember saying I was disappointed because the hall was only about
three-quarters full, and her reply was, “My dear, I was not counting
the people, I was thinking of the efforts which had brought those who
were there.”
‘Her letters were an inspiration. She gave one the full responsibility
of one’s position, and always expected the best. Resolutely direct,
and straightforward in her dealings with me as a subordinate worker,
she never failed to tell me of any word of appreciation that reached
her, as she also told me candidly if she heard of any criticism.
She had such a big, generous mind, even condescending to give an
opportunity for argument when there was any difference of opinion, and
absolutely tolerant and kind when one did not agree with her.
‘She was always considerate of one’s health, and insisted that the
hours laid down for work were not to be exceeded, or, if this was
unavoidable, that the time must be taken off as soon as possible
afterwards. She only saw difficulties to conquer them, and I well
remember in one of her letters from Lazaravatz, she wrote so
characteristically--“the work is most interesting, bristling with
difficulties.”
‘My happiest recollection is of a visit to the Highlands, to speak at
some Suffrage meetings I had arranged for her. In the train she was
always busy writing, in that beautiful clear characteristic hand, like
herself, triumphing over the jolting of the Highland Railway, as she
did later in Serbia. In the early morning she had to catch a train at
Inverness, and we went by motor from Nairn. For once the writing was
laid aside, and she gave herself up to the enjoyment of the sunrise,
and the beautiful lights on the Ross-shire hills, as we travelled
along the shores of the Moray Firth. When the car broke down, out came
the despatch case again, while the chauffeur and I put on the Stepney.
There was no complaining about the lost train, a wire was sent to the
committee apologising for her absence, and then she immediately turned
her attention to other business.’
One who first came under her influence as a patient, and became a warm
friend, gives some reminiscences. Her greeting to the elect at the
beginning of the year was, ‘A good new year, and the Vote _this_ year.’
‘I remember once, as we descended the steps of St. Giles’ after
attending a service at which the Edinburgh Town Council was present,
she spoke joyfully of the time coming when we, the women of Edinburgh
and of Scotland, would “help to build the New Jerusalem, with the
weapon ready to our hand--the Vote.”’
The year 1906 brought the Liberals into political power, and with
the great wave of democratic enthusiasm which gave the Government of
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman an enormous majority there came other
expressions of the people’s will.
The Franchise for women had hitherto been of academic interest in the
community: a crank, many thought it, like total abstinence or Christian
Science. The claims of women were frequently brought before Parliament
by private members, and if the Bill was not ‘talked out,’ it was talked
round, as one of the best jests of a Parliamentary holiday. The women
who advocated it were treated with tolerance, their public advocacy
was deemed a _tour de force_, and their portraits were always of the
nature of caricatures, except those in _Punch_, where the opponent was
caricatured, and the women immortalised.
The Liberal party found its right wing mainly composed of Labour, and
Socialist members were returned to Parliament. From that section of
thought sprang the militant movement, and the whole question of the
enfranchisement of women took on a different aspect.
This chapter does not attempt to give a history of the ‘common cause,’
or the reasons for the rapid way it came to the front, and ranked with
Ireland as among the questions which, left unsettled, became a thorn in
the side of any Government that attempted to govern against, or leaving
outside the expressed will of the people.
This is no place to examine the causes which, along with the militant
movement, but always separated from them, poured such fresh life and
vigour into the old constitutional and law-abiding effort to procure
the free rights of citizenship for women.
The pace quickened to an extent which was bewildering. Where a dozen
meetings a year had been the portion of many speakers, they were
multiplied by the tens and scores. Organisations had to be expanded. A
fighting fund collected, meetings arranged, debates were held all over
the country and among all classes. A press, which had never written up
the subject while its advocates were law-abiding, tumbled over each
other to advertise every movement of all sections of suffragists.
It must be admitted the militants gave them plenty of copy, and the
constitutionalists had an uneasy sense that their stable companions
would kick over the traces in some embarrassing and unexpected way on
every new occasion. Still the tide flowed steadily for the principle,
and those who had its guidance in Parliament and the country had to
use all the strength of the movement in getting it well organised and
carefully worked. Societies were federated, and the greatly growing
numbers co-ordinated into a machine which could bring the best pressure
to bear on Parliament. The well-planned Federation of Scottish
Suffrage Societies owed much to Dr. Inglis’ gift of organisation and
of taking opportunity by the hand. She was Honorary Secretary to the
Scottish Federation, and in those fighting years between 1906 and
1914 she impressed herself much on its policy. In the early years of
her professional life, she used gaily to forecast for herself a large
and paying practice. Her patients never suffered, but she sacrificed
her professional prospects in a large measure for her work for the
Franchise. She gave her time freely, and she raised money at critical
times by parting with what was of value and in her power to give.
Perhaps, the writer may here again give her own reminiscences. Her
fellowship with Dr. Inglis was all too rarely social; they met almost
entirely in their suffrage work. To know Dr. Inglis at all was to know
her well. The transparent sincerity and simplicity of her manner left
nothing to be discovered. One felt instinctively she was a comrade
one could ‘go tiger-hunting with,’ and to be in her company was to be
sustained by a true helpmate. We were asked to speak together. Invited
by the elect, and sometimes by the opponents to enjoy hospitality, Dr.
Inglis was rarely able to come in time for the baked meats before we
ascended the platform, and uttered our platitudes to rooms often empty
woodyards, stuck about with a remnant of those who would be saved. She
usually met us on the platform, having arrived by the last train, and
obliged to leave by the first. But she never came stale or discouraged.
There was always the smile at the last set-back, the ready joke at our
opponents, the subtle sense that she was out to win, the compelling
force of sustained effort that made at least one of her yoke-fellows
ashamed of the faint heart that could never hope to win through.
Sometimes we travelled back together; more often we would meet next day
in St. Giles’ after the daily service, and our walk home was always
a cheer. ‘Never mind’ the note to discouragement. ‘Remember this or
that in our favour; our next move must be in this direction.’ And the
thought was always there (if her unselfconsciousness prevented it being
spoken--as one wishes to-day it had been)--‘The meeting went, because
you were there and set your whole soul on “willing” it through.’
She had no sympathy with militantism. There was no better fighter
with legitimate weapons, but she saw how closely the claim to do wrong
that good might come was related to anarchy, and her sense of true
citizenship was outraged by law-breaking which, to her clear judgment,
could only retard the ultimate triumph of a cause rooted in all that
was just and righteous. She was not confused by any cross-currents
of admiration for individual courage and self-sacrifice, and her one
desire was to see that the Federation was ‘purged’ of all those who
belonged to the forces of disintegration.
She had the fruit of her political sagacity, and her fearless pursuit
after integrity in deed and in word. When the moment came when she was
to go to the battle fronts of the world, a succourer of many, she went
in the strength of the Suffrage women of Scotland. They were her shield
and buckler, and their loyal support of her work and its ideals was
her exceeding great reward. Without their organised strength she could
never have called into existence those units and their equipment which
have justly earned the praises of nations allied in arms.
With the rise of the militant movement, the whole Suffrage cause
passed through a cloud of opprobrium and almost universal objurgation.
Women were all tarred with the same stick, and fell under one
condemnation. It is now of little moment to recall this, except in as
much as it affected Elsie Inglis. The Scottish Suffrage societies, who
gave their organisation and their workers to start the Scottish Women’s
Hospitals, found that the community desired to forget the unpopular
Suffrage, and to remember only the Scottish Hospitals. Speakers for the
work that Dr. Inglis was doing were asked to avoid ‘the common cause.’
No one who knew her would consent to deny by implication one of the
deepest mainsprings of her work. The Churches were equally timid in
aught that gave comfort or consolation to those who were loyal to their
Christian social ideal for women. No organised society owes more to the
administrative work of women than does the Christian Church throughout
the world. No body of administrators have been slower to perceive that
women in responsible positions would be a strength to the Church than
have been the clergy of the Church. The writer of _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_
puts into the mouth of the clerical type of that day the argument
that the Old Testament gave an historic basis for the enslavement of
races, and St. Paul had sanctioned slavery in the New Testament. The
spirit of Christianity has raised women from a ‘low estate,’ and women
owe everything to the results of Christianity; but the ecclesiastical
mind has never shaken off the belief that they are under a special
curse from the days of Eden, and that St. Paul’s outlook on women
in his day was the last revelation as to their future position in a
jealously-guarded corporation. Which of us, acquainted with the Church
history of our day, but remembers the General Assembly when the women
missionaries were first invited to stand by their fellow-workers and be
addressed by the Moderator on their labours and sufferings in a common
cause? It was a great shock to the fathers and brethren that their sex
should not disqualify them from standing in the Assembly, which would
have more democratic weight in the visible Church on earth if some of
its elected lay members were women serving in the courts of the Church.
In this matter and in many others concerning women, the Church is not
yet triumphant over its prejudices bedded in the geological structure
of Genesis.
In all periods of the enfranchisement struggle there were individual
clergy who aided women with their warm advocacy and the helpful
direction of thought. Elsie Inglis was a leader of this movement in its
connection with a high Christian ideal of the citizenship of women.
To those who gathered in St. Margaret’s, the church of Parliament in
history, to commemorate all her works begun and ended as a member of
Christ’s Church here on earth, it was fitting that Bishop Gore, who had
so consistently upheld the cause, should speak of her work as one who
had helped to win the equality of women in a democratic, self-governing
State.
This memoir would utterly fail to reproduce a picture of Dr. Inglis if
it did not emphasise how her spirit was led and disciplined, tempered
and steeled, through this long and fiery trial to the goal of a leading
ideal. The contest trained her for her splendid achievements in
overcoming all obstacles in ministering to the sufferings of nations,
‘rightly struggling to be free.’ Her friend, Miss Wright, says:--
‘We did not always agree. Many were the arguments we had with her, but
she was always willing to understand another point of view and willing
to allow for difference of opinion. She was very fair-minded and
reasonable, and deplored the excesses of the militant suffragettes.
She was in no sense a man-hater; to her the world was composed of men
and women, and she thought it a mistake to exalt the one unduly over
the other. She was never embittered by her struggle for the position
of women. She loved the fight, and the endeavour, and to arrive at any
point just meant a fresh setting forward to another further goal.
‘From her girlhood onward, her effort was to free and broaden life for
other women, to make the world a better place to live in.
‘I had a letter this week from Annie Wilson, Elsie’s great friend.
She says, “It seems to me Elsie’s whole life was full of championship
of the weak, and she was so strong in maintaining what was right. I
feel sure she has inspired many. I remember once saying in connection
with some work I was going to begin, ‘I wonder if I shall be able,’
and Elsie saying in her bright way, ‘What man has done man can do.’
I am so glad that she had the opportunity of showing her great
administrative capacity, and that her power is known and acknowledged.
She is a great woman. I cannot tell you what it will be not to have
her welcome to look forward to when I come home.”
‘Elsie had in many respects what is, perhaps wrongly, called a man’s
mind. She was an Imperialist in the very best sense, and had high
ideals for her country and people. She was a very womanly woman,
never affecting mannish ways as a pose. If she seemed a strong-minded
woman it was because she had strenuous work to do. She was never “a
lone woman.” She was always one of a family, and in the heart of the
family. Elsie always had the _lovingest_ appreciation and backing from
her nearest and dearest, and that a wide and varied circle. So, also,
she did not need to fight for her position; it has been said of her,
“Whenever she began to speak her pleasant well-bred accent and manner
gained her a hearing.” She was ever a fighter, but it was because she
wanted those out in the cold and darkness to come into the love and
light which she herself experienced and sought after always more fully.
‘We looked forward to more frequent meetings when working days were
done. Now she has gone forward to the great work beyond:
‘“Somewhere, surely, afar
In the sounding labour home vast
Of being, is practised that strength--
Zealous, beneficent, firm.”’