throughout the country were loyal to the cause by whomsoever it was represented, just as Italian patriots in the great days of the Risorgimento supported the unity of Italy, whether promoted by Cavour, Garibaldi, or Mazzini.[1]
The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies endeavoured to steer an even keel. They never weakened in their conviction that constitutional agitation was not only right in itself, but would prove far more effective in the long run than any display of physical violence, as a means of converting the electorate, the general public, and, consequently, Parliament and the Government, to a belief in women's suffrage. But the difficulties for a long time were very great. A few of our own members attacked us because we were not militant; others resigned because they disapproved of the militantism which we had repudiated. On one such occasion a high dignitary of the Church of England, who is also a distinguished historian, wrote to resign his position as vice-president of one of our societies because he highly disapproved of the recent action of the members of militant societies. The honorary secretary replied, asking him if he was also relinquishing his connection with Christianity, as she gathered from his writings that he strongly disapproved of what some Christians had done in the supposed interests of Christianity. It is to the credit of both that the threatened resignation was withdrawn. We tried to comfort and help the weak-hearted by reminding them, in the words of Viscount Morley, that "No reformer is fit for his task if he suffers himself to be frightened by the excesses of an extreme wing."[2]
Personally it was to myself the most difficult time of my forty years of suffrage work. I was helped a good deal by recalling a saying of my husband's about the Irish situation in the 'eighties, when he was heard saying to himself, "Just keep on and do what
- ↑ See Garibaldi and the Making of Italy, by G. M. Trevelyan, p. 3.
- ↑ Morley's Life of Gladstone, vol. iii. p. 371.
