injuring the ordinary non-political citizen, as a "protest," would not legally come into the category of political offences and hence protect their authors from being surrendered as ordinary criminals.
The real fact, of course, is that all this talk on the part of suffragettes and their backers about "political" offences and "political" prison treatment is only a mean and underhand way of trying to secure special sex privileges under false pretences. Those who talk the loudest in the strain in question know this perfectly well.
These falsehoods are dangerous, in spite of what one would think ought to be their obvious character as such, by reason of the psychological fact that you only require to repeat a lie often enough, provided you are uncontradicted, in order for the aforesaid lie to be received as established truth by the mass of mankind ("mostly fools," as Carlyle had it).
It is a preposterous claim, I contend, that any misdemeanour and a fortiori any felony has, law apart, and even from a merely ethical point of view, any claim to special consideration and leniency on the bare declaration of the felon or misdemeanant that it had been dictated by political motive. In no country, at any time, has the mere assertion of political motive been held to bring an ordinary crime within the sphere of treatment of political offences. According to the legal and ethical logic
