THE NEW MACHIAVELLI

2

In all my earlier imaginings of statecraft I had tacitly assumed

either that the relations of the sexes were all right or that anyhow

they didn't concern the state. It was a matter they, whoever "they"

were, had to settle among themselves. That sort of disregard was

possible then. But even before 1906 there were endless intimations

that the dams holding back great reservoirs of discussion were

crumbling. We political schemers were ploughing wider than any one

had ploughed before in the field of social reconstruction. We had

also, we realised, to plough deeper. We had to plough down at last

to the passionate elements of sexual relationship and examine and

decide upon them.

The signs multiplied. In a year or so half the police of the

metropolis were scarce sufficient to protect the House from one

clamorous aspect of the new problem. The members went about

Westminster with an odd, new sense of being beset. A good

proportion of us kept up the pretence that the Vote for Women was an

isolated fad, and the agitation an epidemic madness that would

presently pass. But it was manifest to any one who sought more than

comfort in the matter that the streams of women and sympathisers and

money forthcoming marked far deeper and wider things than an idle

fancy for the franchise. The existing laws and conventions of

relationship between Man and Woman were just as unsatisfactory a

disorder as anything else in our tumbled confusion of a world, and

that also was coming to bear upon statecraft.

My first parliament was the parliament of the Suffragettes. I don't

propose to tell here of that amazing campaign, with its absurdities

and follies, its courage and devotion. There were aspects of that

unquenchable agitation that were absolutely heroic and aspects that

were absolutely pitiful. It was unreasonable, unwise, and, except

for its one central insistence, astonishingly incoherent. It was

amazingly effective. The very incoherence of the demand witnessed,

I think, to the forces that lay behind it. It wasn't a simple

argument based on a simple assumption; it was the first crude

expression of a great mass and mingling of convergent feelings, of a

widespread, confused persuasion among modern educated women that the

conditions of their relations with men were oppressive, ugly,

dishonouring, and had to be altered. They had not merely adopted

the Vote as a symbol of equality; it was fairly manifest to me that,

given it, they meant to use it, and to use it perhaps even

vindictively and blindly, as a weapon against many things they had

every reason to hate…

I remember, with exceptional vividness, that great night early in

the session of 1909, when-I think it was-fifty or sixty women went

to prison. I had been dining at the Barham's, and Lord Barham and I

came down from the direction of St. James's Park into a crowd and a

confusion outside the Caxton Hall. We found ourselves drifting with

an immense multitude towards Parliament Square and parallel with a

silent, close-packed column of girls and women, for the most part

white-faced and intent. I still remember the effect of their faces

upon me. It was quite different from the general effect of staring

about and divided attention one gets in a political procession of

men. There was an expression of heroic tension.

There had been a pretty deliberate appeal on the part of the women's

organisers to the Unemployed, who had been demonstrating throughout

that winter, to join forces with the movement, and the result was

shown in the quality of the crowd upon the pavement. It was an

ugly, dangerous-looking crowd, but as yet good-tempered and

sympathetic. When at last we got within sight of the House the

square was a seething seat of excited people, and the array of

police on horse and on foot might have been assembled for a

revolutionary outbreak. There were dense masses of people up

Whitehall, and right on to Westminster Bridge. The scuffle that

ended in the arrests was the poorest explosion to follow such

stupendous preparations…