5 MAY 1906, Page 17

WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE.

[To THE EDITOR Of THE "SPECTATOR.") STE,—In your "News of the Week" last week, in dealing with the disturbance in the Ladies' Gallery of the House of Commons on April 25th, you seemed to imply (or at any rate you implied nothing to the contrary) that the discredit of this odious incident must rest upon the woman's suffrage move- ment. In justice to the thousands of women who for years have worked quietly, unweariedly, unceasingly to secure the political emancipation of their sex, it cannot be too widely known that the disturbance on Wednesday week, as well as the scenes which took place at certain meetings during the General Election, were the work of a single small cluster of silly, excitable women, representing nobody but themselves, whose action, as is well known to every one in close touch with the movement, is ridiculed, condemned, and deplored by an overwhelming majority of the organised woman suffragists throughout the country. The injury they have done our cause has been magnified tenfold, unconsciously or maliciously, by the fictitious importance which has been given them by the sensation-loving Press.—I am, Sir, &c.,

E. T. RATHBONE,

Hon. Secretary Liverpool Society for Woman's Suffrage.