Baltimore Evening Sun (7 February 1912): 6.

Mr. Speaker Trippe to the Hon. the Rev. William H. Anderson, camerlengo of the Anti-Saloon League:

A man who plays dirty politics must be pushing a cause without merit.

A saying of undoubted truth—but of, oh, what disconcerting applications!

How the registered voters of Baltimore regard the new charter of the boomers:

In favor of it........................................... 3%
Don’t know nothing about it.................. 18%
Agin’ it because Harry is all right.......... 62%
Agin’ it because everything them boomers wants is bunk............... 17%

Considering yesterday the question of woman’s fitness for war—a quality ridiculously denied them by bilious foes of the suffrage—I ran out of space before I could support my argument with appropriate examples. But that such examples are to be had in abundance, even without going to ancient history, must be obvious to every student of the feminist movement of the past generation. The doings of the militant suffragettes in England have plainly revealed, not only a high degree of political sapience, but also a quite extraordinary capacity for military enterprise. They have fought and they have endured, and what is more, they have done both things enthusiastically, and without making any maudlin appeals for sympathy.

If you want to get a glimpse of the warlike talents and callosities of women you can do no better than read “The Suffragette,” by Sylvia Pankhurst, an astonishing record of daring and fortitude. Miss Pankhurst herself has shown military genius of a high order. She planned and commanded some of the most effective attacks upon the constabulary of London and was undaunted when the catchpolls walloped her with their espantoons. Her eyes blacked and bleeding at the nose, she was yet able to howl down the mob of circumambient scoffers, and at the police station, later on, she flabbergasted magistrate and bailiffs with her cuastic wit. The best and bravest men can do is to fight and run away. But women fight and dance away—a vast and revolutionary improvement in technique.

Behind prison walls, as in the thick of roughhouse, the English suffragettes have displayed an unconquerable spirit. Some of them, cast into dungeons, went on what they called hunger strikes, and so it became necessary to feed them by force. To anyone familiar with this process their sufferings must be evident. The victim, as I hear, is first strapped to a chair and then a section of gas stove tubing is rammed down her throat. The free end of the tube, to which a funnel is attached, is then elevated, and the funnel is filled with buttermilk, lintel soup or some other suitable victual. Respiration is seriously impeded, and speech, of course, is downright impossible. And yet the suffragettes bore the thing with supreme courage. One of the most impressive pictures I have ever seen, indeed, shows a middle-aged crusader in black bombazine, her arms and legs fastened to a chair, a gas pipe protruding from her face—and devastating epigrams flashing from her eyes!

In a hundred such ways the growth of the feminist movement has uncovered latent talents and capacities in women—not only for labor, intrigue and the dialectic, but also, and more especially, for what the anarchists call action. The woman of yesterday, when injustice crushed her, took refuge in tears. The crystal drop of moisture, trembling on her eyelash, was not only her anodyne, but also her weapon. With it she attacked and melted the hard heart of her male oppressor. But no more. The woman of today, disdaining tears, puts her trust in more valiant remonstrances. She has become familiar, indeed, with every weapon in the arsenal of aggression, from the knockout drop to the magazine pistol, and from jiu-jitsu to hydrocyanic acid, and she uses them all with skill and daring.

A friend in Denver sends me certain statistics which well exhibit this change. In the year 1889, as he shows, wife-beating was a common crime in that city—so common that no fewer than 716 cases were tried by the magistrates during the twelvemonth. But in 1893 the women of Colorado gained the suffrage, and at once there was a sharp decline. By 1896 the number of cases had dropped to 426 and by 1900 to 301. Last year there were but 116. Says my friend:

It is common to ascribe this decline to new laws passed by women legislators, but the truth is that the present laws are no more harsh or effective than those in force in 1889. The real cause is the increased courage of the emancipated woman. No longer held down, consciously or unconsciously, by medieval notions of her own inferiority, she now resists violence with violence, and the result appears upon the court records. In a few years, I fully believe, husband-beating will be commoner in Denver than wife-beating.

Returns from larger areas reveal the same change. Not only whre women have actually gained the vote, but also hwere they are still battling for it, have the effects of that endeavor, and its consequent release from convention, shown themselves. The woman policeman, unknown five years ago, is now commonplace. Women now serve as bailiffs and jailers. They go in for games requiring hardihood and courage. They show an increasing talent for the more desperate and difficult varities of crime.

For example, homicide. In 1885, according to Dr. John J. Brewster, the distinguished statistician, but 2.3 per cent. of the murders committed in the United States were committed by women. But by 1900 the ratio had risen to 3.1 per cent. and last year it was nearly 5 per cent. Murder, of course, is a crime, but let us not forget that it is also an act requiring considerable enterprise and courage, and that its increase among women is thus good evidence of growing initiative and independence. No Lady ever harmed a fly. A woman, to achieve the assassination of her husband, or even to imagine it, must first throw off those false assumptions of weakness, of squeamishness and of dependence which have oppressed her sex for centuries. However much we may abhor her act, we cannot fail to recognize the warlike spirit and hardihood behind it.

Thus the argument that women are unfit for war, that they could not enforce their own laws, goes to pieces. Their fitness for war, if anything, is actually superior to that of men. As I have shown, they have the courage, they have the endurance and they are not appalled by carnage. All they need, to send them flocking to the battle field, is release from that purely fictitious qualmishness, that theoretical lack of mettle and fortitude, with which the sentimental imagination of man has endowed and cursed them. The Waterloo of tomorrow may be won, not on the cricket fields of Eton, but on the soap boxes of the suffragettes. But of all this more anon.