Robert F. Cholmeley

“ Politics are concerned with means, and only those who are able to agree about means can exercise an effective political force. The very greatness of the cause helps to blind us to this; we see that it is a great cause, that no party bias is too strong for it, that social prejudices are levelled by it, and we forget that what is wanted for success is not so much to unite every kind of person in a general sympathy, but to combine the largest possible number in active support of some particular action. ”

“ If women are not really angry, or if not enough of them are angry to matter, or if, as some tell us, the knowledge that some women have lost patience is likely to make all other women more patient, there is an end of it; demonstrations are then only machinery, and must be managed accordingly; but to those who believe that these demonstrations mean anger, an anger that is becoming daily more bitter and more widely spread, it seems not only difficult to criticise them as tactics but almost impertinent to treat them as tactics at all. ”

“ The opponents of Women's Suffrage—the tooth-and-nail, "woman is woman" opponents—are not the enemy to be feared. They have not a leg to stand on, and they know it. The enemy is within. The enemy is the disorganisation that comes of divided counsels ”

“ I am not here concerned with the desirability of universal adult suffrage, but as a matter of tactics I think that the Adult Suffrage party is gravely mistaken. It is playing into the hands of two sets of opponents—those who support adult suffrage merely because it is the most convenient means of opposing any smaller extension of the franchise to women, and those who are really in favour of universal adult suffrage for men only. ”

“ Private members may pledge themselves, may introduce bills till the crack of doom, but until a Government takes up the question, nothing can be done. Governments, then, are the proper object of attack, and no man shall become a member of Parliament who supports a Government which refuses to make our cause its own. This policy differs from the Adult Suffrage policy in that it would be absolutely justified by success; but it is even less likely to succeed. It depends upon a serious exaggeration of the forces that can be brought into the field, and there are few worse errors in tactics than this. ”

“ Suppose that the present Government could be turned out—and on the most cheerful calculation it would take some years to do it by means of by-elections fought on the Suffrage question—what would be the feelings of Liberal Suffragists when they found themselves under a Tory Government, which would be opposed to all their convictions but one, and would be no more pledged to respect that one than its predecessor? ”

“ Even more important, if possible, than the choice of a measure is the choice of an election policy. There is plenty of evidence of the dangers of disunion. Hexham made a Government anxious for a few weeks, but with Suffragists working for both sides the anxiety soon faded, and the only consolation that women could derive from the result was that the campaign was a refutation of those who profess to fear that women will vote solid against men; for if they are so divided when their own greatest interest is concerned, they are hardly likely to unite in any lesser cause. ”

“ At any rate, the whole course of history teaches us that violence in resenting injustice has always made it more, and not less, likely that injustice will be remedied; and there is no particular reason why the injustice of withholding votes from women should be any exception.
Demonstrations, then, are valuable as tactics just so far as they mean something more than tactics; but when we come to questions of election policy we are in the region of tactics pure and simple. ”

“ All political parties are working for the same end, if you only put the end far enough away from politics; for no party could exist unless most of its members believed that their aims were for the common good. ”

“ Those who take that view simply ignore the fact which made those demonstrations possible. They ignore the fact that it was bitter anger that prompted those defiant acts, and that anger has done queer things before now, even in other cases where superior persons thought that the franchise ought to be argued about dispassionately. It is just as important to convince the public that women are angry as it is to convince them that women are right ”

“ But there is not the smallest chance that adult suffrage for men and women would be worth any Government's while within the next twenty years. The Adult Suffrage policy is wrong because it will not only fail to get what women want, but will help their enemies to give them what they do not want. It will not get the vote for all women, because too many of its professed supporters are entirely opposed to that aim ”

“ In order to convert the public to any given view, if that view is to find expression in action, it is necessary not only to make the public see that that particular view is right, but to demonstrate that it will be the worse for it unless it acts accordingly. Those who object to the attempts upon the House of Commons generally fail to do justice to the utility of any kind of surprise in helping to open the eyes of the public. To borrow a military phrase, they are valuable to begin with as shock tactics. ”

“ The great mass of those who want votes for women are not going to subordinate every other political conviction to that, and unless they would do so, this policy could not possibly succeed. The possibilities of such a subordination are too obvious. ”

“ There are already as many parties among the supporters of Women's Suffrage as would suffice to stock a Parliament. There is the National Union party, which will take any instalment of Women's Suffrage—even a Bill for conferring the vote upon one woman, as it was put the other day—on the ground that as soon as the door has been opened ever so little, the pressure upon it must force it all the way in a very short time. ”

“ There is plenty of the enthusiasm which will face personal inconvenience and suffering; what is wanted is more of the spirit which can subordinate personal enthusiasms to an understanding of the conditions of success. ”

“ It was said of William the Third by his great opponent, that "he bore himself in all things like an old general, except that he exposed himself like a young soldier." We have got to prove that enthusiasm is not incompatible with generalship, or the fortresses of prejudice will not go down before our arms. ”

“ Nobody likes doing it, but it has to be done somehow. It will disgust sober, decorous people; they will probably say that the fact that you can behave so proves that there is less in your arguments than they thought there was; you will alienate friends. ”

“ Again, working men form the vast majority of the present electorate, and that electorate, only last year, returned to the House of Commons 420 men pledged to Women's Suffrage. As against these facts what is there to prove Mr. ”