Page:The Future of the Women's Movement.djvu/214

 ability of women, and of the possibility of men and women working together in the future.

In the course of the militant movement, one has seen a vast amount of femininity using the old weapons, which one hopes will be gradually laid aside. Defiance alternating with injured innocence. The smashing of a window by a woman, who cries, when a man apprehends her, "You mustn't touch me! I'm a woman!" The frequent inexcusable untruth that "women are being imprisoned for daring to ask for the vote," and that the Home Secretary is starving women in prison. It would have been too wonderful if women, in their fight for liberty, had proved themselves perfect. We have not. We have shown human foibles, like men, partisanship and violence, like men, and we have shown some faults which, though not specifically feminine, are the faults natural to subjected persons.

When all is said about the mistakes and faults and follies of suffragists, those of the Government have been far greater. They belittled the women's movement, and treated it with the sort of sneering contempt which is more provocative than anything in the world. They magnified the first importunities into crimes. The early militants were treated with monstrous and disproportionate severity, and this contributed largely to their early popularity. They were treated like the worst criminals, for mere impropriety, or for the technical offence of obstruction. They were subjected to the most