NAWSA Subject File Zangwill, Israel The Sword And The Spirit. By Israel Zangwill. The Woman's Press Price 1d. Votes for Women! National Women's Social and Political Union. Offices: 4, Clement's Inn, Strand, London, W.C. Telegraphic Address: Wospolu, London. Telephone Holborn 2724 (Three lines). Committee: Mrs. Panhurst (Founder) } Hon. Secretaries Mrs. Tuke } Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, Hon. Treasurer. Miss Christabel Pankhurst, LL.B., Org. Secretary. Miss Mary Neal. Miss Annie Kenney. Mrs. Wolstenholme Elmy. Miss Mary Gawthorpe. Miss Elizabeth Robins. Bankers: Messrs. Barclay and Co., 19, Fleet Street, E.C. Auditors: Messrs. Sayers and Wesson, Chartered Accountants, 19, Hanover Sq., W. Publishing Office: The Woman's Press, 156, Charing Cross Road, W.C. Newspaper: Votes for Women. Colours: Purple, White, and Green. The Women's Social and Political Union are NOT asking for a vote for every woman, but simply that sex shall cease to be a disqualification for the franchise. At present men who pay rates and taxes, who are owners, occupiers, lodgers, or have the service or university franchise, possess the Parliamen- tary vote. The Women's Social and Political Union claim that women who fulfil the same conditions shall also enjoy the franchise. It is stimated that when this claim has been conceded about a million-and-a- quarter women will possess the vote, in addition to the seven-and-a-half- million men who are at present enfranchised. The Women's Social and Political Union claim that a simple measure, giving the vote to women on these terms, shall be passed immediately. NOTE. The occasion for the delivery of the speech by Mr. Israel Zangwill which is printed in the following pages was a great meeting held by the Women's Social and Political Union in the Royal Albert Hall, London, on Thursday, November 10th, 1910, a few days before the re-assembling of Parliament after the summer recess. The whole of the lower part of the hall, consisting of some 5,000 seats, was filled by those members of the Union and friends who had purchased tickets. The upper parts were opened free to women. In the course of the evening a sum amounting to £9,000 was sub- scribed by the audience to the campaign fund of the Union. The Sword and the Spirit. By Israel Zangwill - Cabinet Ministers, whether for or against Female Suffrage, were last year unanimous in assuring us that the cause had been put back by the militant tactics of the body which is responsible for this mammoth meeting. Never had Female Suffrage stood so remote and uncertain. When I remember our majority of 110 in Parliament I am tempted to say to those Ministers, in the words of the Gospel, "Ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky and the earth, how is it ye do not discern this time?" Never was Female Suffrage so near and so certain. The principle of Votes for Women is now absolutely safe - far safer than the places of those Cabinet Ministers. If Mother Shipton had been a real prophetess, she would have left us as a prophecy -- When shall women vote? When men fly. 3 I believe that in the drowsy circles and old-world haunts of the Anti-Suffrage League, the question of Female Suffrage is still regarded as open to debate. Not so in live political circles. Not even in Parliament. There the question is no longer "Whether"; it is "How?" It is not now "Shall women have votes?" but "Which party shall collar women's votes?" The setting og this little question is the only thing that delays our triumph. Till the other day both parties banged the door in woman's face. Now both are fighting to hold the door open for her, and it is only because this excess of chivalry blocks the doorway that she is still outside. But the object of our movement is not votes for Con- servatives nor votes for Liberals, but votes for women. And having come thus far across every obstacle - over hedges and ditches, over bogs and mountains, over policemen and Premiers-we are not going to sit down patiently while Parliamentary parties work out their mutual long-drawn intrigues. That may take years, and, as Bacon reminds us, delays are dangerous. We demand that our victory shall be translated into legisla- tion forthwith. We denounce the mean trick of denying us the chance of a third reading. That is not playing the game. The Suffrage movement has brought many useful side-lessons. The penetration of its martyrs into our prisons has thrown most valuable illumination upon the abuses in those prisons, and the penetration of the cause into Parliament has turned a searchlight upon the abuses in Parliament. Laymen like myself, driven from our desks to the platform by the stupidity of the pro- fessional politician, stand in amaze before the defects 4 of the political machine. Any blockhead in Parliament can block a bill, any parrot can talk it out, while even when a large majority has endorsed it, the Prime Minister can cut it dead. We men at least imagined we were living under representative government. But where is our representative government if a majority of 110 can be thus mocked and nullified? Mr. Asquith can see the mote in the eye of the Lords. Let him first remove the beam in his own. The Prime Minister's Paradox. Mr. Asquith last night dubbed the international situation re armaments a tragic paradox. I doubt it British history has ever produced a more comic paradox than the position of Mr. Asquith, who while his hands are raised to heaven in protest against the veto of the Lords is standing with both feet on a majority in the Commons. Three hundred members of Parliament voted for our Bill and twenty-four more paired in its favour, yet because this solitary autocrat regards Female Suffrage as a social calamity that would let loose upon the country the element he describes as fickle and capricious, these 324 men, including the leaders of all the other parties, count for nothing. We demand the removal of this Asquith veto; we demand the liberties of Parliament against the tyranny of the Cabinet. "I invite you," said Mr. Asquith in this very Hall, "to consider the veto of the Lords as the dominating issue in British politics." I am sorry to tell him there is no such dominating issue. If the subject was ever burning, the Conference has quenched it. But even at the height of the flame, what majority 5 did Mr. Asquith obtain for his Veto Bill? One hundred and three. One hundred and three after the last ounce on pressure had been put on, after every pos- sible political combination had been exhausted! We have a majority of 110, with 130 absentees still squeez- able. I invite Mr. Asquith to consider Female Suffrage the dominating issue in British politics. I call on the Liberal leader to bow to the Liberal majority. I say Liberal majority, though I know that the majority comes from both sides of the House. But one result of the searchlight which Female Suffrage has turned upon the House has been to disclose who are the real Liberals and who are the real Conservatives. For what can be more Radical than to admit a new sex to the franchise, and what can be more Tory than to cling blindly to the status quo? The unhappy Members of Parliament, driven by Whips to vote with the Party into which they were born, pitchforked, or seduced by their ambitions, were for once allowed to be true to their own selves. The House of Commons was turned into a Palace of Truth. What strange sights we saw then! Asquith stood revealed as a Tory, Balfour as a Liberal, Winston Churchill as a wobbler, and Lloyd George as a lawyer. We witnessed the Gilbertian situa- tion of the Tory leader instructing the Liberal leader that government rests upon the consent of the governed. That both parties are bitterly dissatisfied with their leaders is an open secret. I can only suggest they should swap them. Perhaps this is what the Conference has been discussing. Perhaps this is its jealously guarded secret. I am sure it a solution which Suffra- gists would welcome. 6 Democrats in a Dilemma. The case of Winston Churchill and Lloyd George differs from the case of Mr. Asquith. These gentlemen are not too Tory; they are too Liberal. The are afraid --and I believe honestly afraid-- that the ladies enfranh- chised by out Bill will turn them out of office, and with them all their cherished programme of social reform. Panic-stricken, they count the Tory chickens before they are hatched, and protest that they will eat them out of house and home. I am not concerned to dispute their figures or their calculations, however questionable. They are entitled to their point of view. But it is the point of view of purblind party politicians, not of far- sighted statesmen. These bouncing democrats show little faith in their own speeches, or in the large forces that they declare to be shaping the future. For it, as Mr. Lloyd George told us in his City Temple speech, the storm-cone has been hoisted in social politics, does he suppose that the world-wide waves of disturbance which make the weather can be seriously modified by a petty majority of Tory women of property, even if it be true that the Conciliation Bill would produce such a majority? Can a few thousand maiden ladies ride the whirlwind and direct the storm? If any party should complain that the Conciliation Bill is not democratic enough, it is the Labour Party. If any party stands to lose by an increased Tory vote, it is the small, struggling party that puts Socialism on its banner. Yet what is the attitude of the Labour Party? Is it counting votes? Is it calculating maiden ladies? No; it is regarding justice. While Messrs. Lloyd George and Winston Churchill are giving up to 7 party what was meant for womankind, it is a member of the Labour Party, Mr. Shackleton, who is bringing in this Bill, and the overwhelming majority of his colleagues cry with him, "Let justice be done through the party fall." But the party will not fall. These Labour leaders show a larger and a shrewder statesman- ship the the Liberal leaders. They understand that there is no item of social progress on the programme of Messrs. Lloyd George and Winston Churchill which can for a moment compare in importance or fruitfulness with this Bill of ours, none so calculated to break up crusted conceptions of life and stimulate a fresh current of thought on all social questions. It is a limited Bill - we do not need Lloyd George and Winston Churchill to tell us that - but the enfranchisement of even one woman would be more politically momentous, more historically pregnant than the passage of any of these gentlemen's projects. That single vote would for ever sweep away sex as a barrier to the suffrage. Indeed, if I had my way, I would begin by giving the vote to a single woman. And I would give it first to that woman who, by her public zeal, her oratorical talents, and, above all, her passionate and unresting political activity, has shown herself most worthy of a vote - need I say I refer to Mrs. Humphry Ward? It is because all Suffra- gists realise the expediency of small beginnings rather than endless postponements that they accepted the Conciliation Bill with a unanimity baffling to their enemies and surprising even to their friends. What do the long-winded speeches of Lloyd George and Winston Churchill against this Conciliation Bill amount to? That it is a Conciliation Bill. It does not 8 go far enough. As if a Conciliation Bill could go far enough! As if the very object of a compromise was not a compromise! As if some of us were not as eager as these gentlemen for a more democratic charter! Or as if the Bill would have stood have such a chance had it been broader! Oliver Twist asked for more - it is not recorded that he got it. On the contrary, we are told that the master aimed a blow at Oliver's head, pinioned him in his arms, and shrieked aloud for the beadle. Messrs. Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, indeed, profess their willingness to give us more - despite the master! I quite believe them. But when? In some vague to-morrow. But was are hungry to-day. And what assurance have we that they will be in power to-morrow? Or that the Lords will be out of power? No! We prefer a bird in the hand to two mocking birds in the bush. Not that the Conciliation Bill is beyond further con- ciliation. Just because it is a compromise and not out full formula, we do not cling to every letter and comma of it. If Messrs. Lloyd George and Winston Churchill can find any way of broadening the Bill without narrow- ing its chances, why, so much the better. We are sweetly reasonable. All we insist on at this stage is the abolition of the sex-barrier. And these gentlemen must induce Mr. Asquith to be equally reasonable and not to insist on the enfranchisement of the entire sex at one fell swoop. For, strange to say, the Prime Minister will only permit his misguided henchmen to mislead us into Female Suffrage on condition the evil is wrought on the largest possible scale, and the whole of this fickle and capricious element let loose upon the country at 9 once. But Mr. Asquith must content himself with a smaller social catastrophe. If he is ready to compromise with the Lords, which should he not compromise with the ladies? Arms and the Woman. But if Mr. Asquith hardens his heart and persists in his veto, then there is nothing left but a return to militancy. The truce will be at an end, the era of conciliation will be closed. Mr. Asquith will have to face the question which Mr. Balfour put to him on that magic day when Parliament was turned into a Palace of Truth. How are you to govern in the teeth of all this passionate discontent? No doubt we shall again hear Pharisaic deprecations of militancy, platitudinous appeals for constitutional tactics. But woman is outside the Constitution. The House of Commons has been built woman-tight. Even the friends she has now won inside it cannot fight for her with the true passion that makes history. "Who would be free," said Lord Byron, "themselves must strike the blow." Mr. Asquith is not blind to the consequences of his obstinacy, and in his last speech in the House on this subject he solemnly warned women against taking up arms. He - the busy builder of Dreadnoughts - dared, in a voice grace with religious emotion, to commend to you the words of Christ: "They that take the sword shall perish with the sword." Well, we know who can quote Scripture for his own purposes, but I doubt if Scripture has ever been quoted with such ludicrous inaptness. For what is the sword which you women are taking up? What 10 [*Rob. Burns Why are my dependent thoughts?] E[?] [j?] in my [?]? I came not to bring peace but a sword *] are these militant tactics so portentously rebuked by the Prime Minister? He cannot object to your fighting against him at by-elections-for election warfare is the very breath of his nostrils. He cannot mean the interruption of speeches by questions and comments-for this has always been a feature of British politics. The only new feature is the brutal militancy of the men, the hysterical panic into which the sight or sound of a woman throws them. Mr. Asquith cannot have in mind the threatened campaign of " No vote, no taxes," for since the days of John Hampden the refusal to pay taxes has been regarded as a legitimate political weapon. He cannot be denouncing the old English right of access to a Minister with a petition, for a petition is the very antithesis to a sword. Least of all can Mr. Asquith's language be justified by the acts of physical aggression of which women have been guilty-for, apart from merely technical assaults, these are so rare and petty, counted, as they can be, on the fingers of one hand, that in so vast a movement involving so many myriads of women of all classes they vanish into utter insignificance. In fact, women throughout this whole long fight have wrought fewer casualties than the motor-car containing Mr. Asquith's detectives. One dare not mention it in the same breath with a single riot of miners in Mr. Lloyd George's country. What, then, is this sword? Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Asquith has been misled by a metaphor. There is no more sword in the Suffrage movement than in the Salvation Army. Its militancy is not the militancy of murder which Christ condemned, but the militancy of suffering which Christ commended. The prison and the hospital, hunger, and 11 darkness, and loneliness - these are its weapons. And they are more terrible than swords. Mr. Winston Churchill understands this, if Mr. Asquith does not, for he designs to blunt your weapons, to pad your prisons with those comforts which male politicians have carefully provided for their own contingencies. You are to be almost first-class misdemeanants. Mr. Winston Churchill in thus drawing the sting of your martyrdoms would weaken you far more than by his vote against the Conciliation Bill. But even this new policy of killing you by kindness must automatically defeat itself. For the easier prison is made the more numerous the applicants will be. Prison has already become an honour, when in addition it becomes a luxury it will be a fascination. Woman's place will no longer be the home: it will be the prison. And how is the Home Secretary to provide prisons (with first-class apartments) for all the multitude of female rebels? He will be driven back on the old harshness; repression will grow severer and severer; and the old miserable round will recommence. Mr. Balfour was right, you see. No Government can govern in the teeth of all this passionate discontent. For this discontent is no passing petulance, no fit of the vapours to be dissipated as artificially as it arose, but a righteous indignation that has its roots in basic facts and must grow deeper and wider with every rising of the sun. It is not a discontent which is limited to one country, it is an unrest which is stirring everywhere. Even in Turkey the harems are seething with the new spirit; even in India, Lord Curzon told his Oxford audience the other day, there is a movement towards [*Geo. Lynnell*] 12 the emancipation of the native women in the zenanas, and this pillar of anti-suffrage calls for English women to help their dusky sisters who are freeing themselves from the shackles of their old traditions and customs. The Unanswerable Argument. The demand for Women's Suffrage has behind it many reasons. It will bring to the State many advantages. And the economic causes which have created a surplus of women and pushed a large number of women of all classes outside the home, there to support themselves, have accentuated the consciousness of these reasons and these advantages. But these economic causes, these reasons and advantages, which we have had to expound to our opponents ad nauseam, because they offer those gross material aspects with the Philistine can lay hold of; these causes, reasons and advantages, though they are true causes, true reasons and true advantages, do not touch the true essence of the question. Were these the real, the inmost truth of the matter - were, for example, the vote needed simply as a protection for the female wage-earner - the Suffrage movement would be open to the set-back of the reform proposed by the brilliant Mr. Chesterton, that Western civilisation, having taken a wrong turning when it exposed its women to the greed and competition of the labour market, should boldly retrace its steps and rescue women from the typewriter, the factory, and the coal pit. Looking at the chain-makers of Cradley Heath, Mr. Chesterton, though anti-suffragist, has the frankness to recognise what wretched cant underlies 13 [*hence the "centre" of woman interests - Cat*] the anti-suffragists' contention that woman's place is the home, and he at least would not withhold the franchise without proposing another remedy for our present discontents. But alas! our civilisation cannot be turned upside down as easily as Mr. Chesterton's sentences, and the typewriter, the factory, and the coal-pit will long continue to enslave women. It is true the reasons for Women's Suffrage would remain just as potent were every labouring or professional woman restored to the home and supported by the State. For the home is not an isolated point in the void. Just as light travels to it from every star, so every social force crosses and recrosses it. The law of divorce, for example, affects the very foundations of the home, yet not till the appointment of the Divorce Commission now sitting was woman's view ever consulted. And yet the very fact that women are assisting at this Commission, both as Commissioners and witnesses, leaves it open to the anti-suffragists to argue that ways might be found of weaving women's demands into legislation without the direct agency of the vote. What then is the unanswerable reason for Women's Suffrage? The reason that would remain in being were every practical argument of ours faced and countered by the anti-suffragists? It is that votes for women are demanded by women's spiritual dignity. It is a spiritual unrest which is stirring the world of women. It is in female politics that the storm-cone has been hoisted. That wind of the spirit which lifts the curtains of [* ? *] harem and shakes the walls of the zenana gathers itself here in England to a higher force and threatens the ancient foundations of Parliament. It is urged by Mr. 14 Chesterton and others that this isolation of our women from politics springs not from man's contempt for woman, but from a tender consideration for her. It is an attempt to shield woman from the rough realities of life. It may be so. But the Turk or the Hindu would doubtless allege a similar chivalry for the isolation of his womenkind. Indeed, does not the very word "harem" mean a sanctuary? But whether contempt [* ? *] or consideration inspired these phases of woman's status, they are both outgrown. The Doll's-House is too small for the woman of to-day; she wants a house with more breathing-space, nor do we hold her less immaculate because she concerns herself with the drainage. It is not the least respected members of her sex who are assisting in the Divorce Commission. Woman no longer desires to be wrapped in pleasing illusions and to bask in that man-made social order whose foundations are laid in ruined souls and bodies. We are witnessing, in fact, a new phase in human evolution, and blindness to this phenomenon hardly goes with the type of mind recently recommended to the students of Aberdeen University by their Rector, Mr. Asquith - the mind always open to the air of reason and the light of new truth. As the demand throughout the Orient for Parliaments marks the awakening of the men of the East, so the vote is the seal and symbol of the evolution of the women of the West. And because this evolution is a spiritual phenomenon, it needs no arguments, no statistics. It is its own justification. Vainly is it urged that only a minority of women feels with you, that you must first convert all the others. Why should the higher type be dragged back by the less 15 evolved? No! When you have based the claim of votes for women on the spiritual dignity of women, you have based it on elemental and eternal rock. You have formulated a demand which cannot be out-argued by the stupidest politician or the cleverest epigrammatist. You have said the last word, the word that can neither be added to nor answered. The testimonies it can bring to its truth are not words. The only arguments of the spirit are works, and these arguments you have brought - and stand read to bring - in over-flowing measure. From the lady of quality enduring the torture of the feeding pump to the ill-nourished factory girl saving her ha'pence for the cause, from the amateur newsvendor facing the scoffs and chills of the street to the speaker braving rowdiness of the public meeting - you have raised up a very cloud of witnesses. Self-sacrifice, fearlessness, endurance, unrelaxing labour, sisterly co-operation and cheery comradeship of all ranks and classes, these are the testimonies of your spirit, as they are the guarantees of your speedy and ineluctable victory. - Garden City Press Ltd., Letchworth. On sale at the Woman's Press, 156, Charing Cross Road, W.C. (Tel.: City 3961.) Books. Awakening of Women, by Mrs. F. Swiney ... ... 1s. net. British Free Women, by C.C. Stopes ... ... ... 2s. 6d/ How the Vote was Won (play), by Cicely Hamilton and Christopher St. John ... ... ... ... ... 3d. net. "No Votes for Women," by Lady Constance Lytton ... 3d. net. Spheres of Man and Woman in the Constitution, by C.C. 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Books, Pamphlets, Leaflets, Badges, Colours, etc., are on sale at the Woman's Press, 156, Charing Cross Road, London, W.C. - "One of the cleverest political journals published in Europe." -The Call (San Francisco) Collection Title NATIONAL AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION Container 81 Shelf/Accession No. 86-38 (rev 4/75) Reproduced from the collections in the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.