Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/749

 Militancy

(See page 136)

Heckling became a fine art, and even a joyous: for, despite all the suffering it cost them, they carried it through with such inexhaustible spirit and invention as to restore a touch of chic and bravado to our drab life and add to the gaiety of nations. Miss Pankhurst even managed to badger Cabinet Ministers in the witness-box There was no meeting, however guarded, to which, by hook or crook, organ-pipe or drain-pipe, she did not gain admission, padlocking herself against easy expulsion; while, even were her bodily presence averted, always, like the horns of Elfland faintly blowing, came from some well-placed megaphone that inevitable and implacable slogan "Votes for Women." Chalked on pavement or scrawled on walls or blazoned on sky-signs, it became a universal, ubiquitous obsession. Streamers carried it under the terrace of Parliament or balloons suspended it from above. Cabinet Ministers were dogged to their privatest haunts, for the leakages of information were everywhere. Since Christianity no such force has arisen to divide families. No household, however Philistine, was safe from a jail-bird. If Lady Anon asked Lady Alamode when her daughter was coming out, it no longer referred to the young lady's début. The most obstinate autocrat since Pharaoh, Mr. Asquith, has been shown similar signs and wonders. "We are the appointed plagues," said Mrs. Pankhurst, with a rare touch of humor. And nothing has plagued British society more than that outbreak of religion which brought disgrace upon so many