Page:The Future of the Women's Movement.djvu/207

 felt towards the person who has the courage and the genius to utter the words. If Mrs. Pankhurst alone had inspired the militant movement, it would have been at once a nobler and a more terrible thing than it has proved. The machine, that wonderful engine of advertisement and ingenuity, was the work of other minds. Doubtless it was the machine which served to make the lightning progress of the militant movement in its first years; it has been the machine, however, which has largely been responsible for the disasters of recent times. What was great and noble has become inextricably entangled with what the public has come to regard as a gigantic fake, and consequently the attitude of the public is either one of amusement, to see what fresh trick ingenuity will invent, what fresh show will be presented to the gaping crowd, or of exasperation at what seems to them like pointless mischief. The clever exploiting of the psychology of mobs did not go deep enough, and was, in truth, far too cynical. There is an appalling amount of mob spirit (not by any means confined to the common people, but to be seen even in the House of Commons), and many of the militant devices have successfully appealed to this; but no reform worth having was ever won from the mob, and it is the tragic truth that much of the deeper meaning of the most selfless and devoted sacrifice on the part of individual women has been hidden by the very advertisement which it has received.

When the Women's Social and Political Union