ADVERTISEMENT BY VIOLENCE.
THERE has been a tendency lately among some of the woman suffragists who profess constitutional methods to wonder whether, after all, the " suffragettes" with their violence are not more successful than themselves. They have adopted a new form of argument which runs like this : " Here are we employing scrupulously the ladylike methods you recommend to us, and what is the result P We hold crowded meetings at the heart of civilization and the news- papers take no notice of us, whereas they would find plenty of room to report the act of a militant suffragist who set fire to a Government office." This argument betrays a curious frame of mind which is worth examination. Accepting in fact the principle of violence, it lacks the logic or courage to pursue it. It is the result of a strange confusion of thought which runs into avast fallacy. It might be compared with a failure to distinguish between those essentially different things, fame and notoriety ; and it is actuallay failure to choose between publicity and influence.
Any one can become notorious. If you threw down a cracker in the courtyard of Buckingham Palace your name would be known all over England on the morrow. If you published a specialy infamous book your name might, become familiar to the world in a few' days, and yOnr notoriety would,
be even increased by a prosecution. Some ill-balanced or avaricious people apparently think such a thing worth doing at the cost of never again being able to look those whose opinion is worth having straight in the face. Similarly a Member of Parliament might win a large publicity for a crack-brained Bill. It would only have to be weird enough for the purpose, like that of the Frenchman who, according to the legend, won a seat in the Chamber by recommending in a lethargio district of the Midi that dogs should be trained to do all the work of human beings. But, as notoriety is not fame, publicity is not influence. It is astonishing how people seem to be in con- tinued need of reminding themselves of this difference if they would not drop back into the easy fallacy. The one founda- tion on which a policy of violence can build with success is the popular will. As a rule no amount of violence will defeat itself in that case. The French Revolution could not be checked, even by its preposterous excesses, because, in principle, it was fulfilling the desires of the nation. But if there is not an antecedent desire for a thing, violence cannot, by any means, make it popular. Violence advertises the thing ; it draws attention to it, so that it becomes the topic of all conversation, and con- versation means closer scrutiny and analysis. Woman Suffrage, we dare say, has made thousands of adherents because the violence of the militants has fired lazy minds into believing that they ardently desire that on which they had never bestowed a thought. But all the time a contrary and greater reaction has been taking place. Tens of thousands are now alienated. The advertisement has drawn attention to what the public does not want.
It is as though all the world should be attracted to some article, which in the end ttrns out to be useless, by the brilliance and persuasiveness of an advertisement. Perhaps an eccentric and wealthy cutler takes it into his head to sell chopsticks instead of knives and forks, and engages attractive writers and learned lecturers to instruct the public in the enormous advantages chopsticks have over knives and forks. It is more pleasant to put ivory in the mouth than a plated or even a silver fork. Then the associations of chopsticks ! They speak of the refinement and immemorial good taste of China. China rejected the bar- barous knives and forks of the West, not through ignorance but through choice. Laurence Oliphant has told us that in his account of Lord Elgin's mission to China. Chopsticks are the expression of an incomparable subtlety of mind; and they give people the opportunity to display their good breeding by the dexterity necessary for their proper use. Then, poor English people, like poor Chinese, can have chopsticks of wood or bone instead of ivory. A saving of thousands of pounds annually in the national domestic economy ! And are not chop- sticks suitable to a maritime race ? Dampier was interested in them, and it was the old English seamen who called them chopsticks. If any race should use chopsticks, it is the English race. Well, what would be the end of all this advertisement P Crowds would throng the shop of the eccentric cutler to gaze upon these wonderful chopsticks ; the police would arrange them in queues. And at last a few people would buy chopsticks. A Chopstick Society would be formed, and would have an annual dinner and meetings for discussing the hygienic qualities and the philosophical in- fluence of chopsticks. But the great public would decide that it did not want chopsticks, and that chopsticks as compared with knives and forks were, in fact, a nuisance. And the net outcome would be that the cause of chopsticks would be set back because the advertisement had called attention to their defects.
So it is with violence in political advocacy. The woman suffra- gists have not got public opinion with them. They talk as though they are fighting for the people's cause like so many Hampdens. But Hampden was able and prepared to fight physically. The " suffragettes " cannot fight physically, and do not propose seriously to try, though their similes and metaphors run strangely to military forms. They read their awn advertisements and mistake them for the signs of a popular conversion. One need only take successful contem- porary causes and compare them with the methods of militant suffragists to see how differently their organisers go about their business. The National Service League has not yet converted a Government, but it gains hundreds of adherents every week. It is educating the people. It prepares the popular desire on which an advertisement—a plain declaration—can be lai d before some future Government, and that Government will be foroed to give way. The Referendum has already won the day. Its supporters explained it and recommended it for years, so that all thinking people were conversant with it ; and when the political crisis arose into which it exactly fitted, it was thrust triumphantly forward with the goodwill, suddenly declared, of a whole party behind it. But suppose that the members of the National Service League had smashed the windows of the War Office to show that the nation demanded to be trained to arms, or that the advocates of the Referendum had broken down the palings of Hyde Park to indicate the annoyance of the democracy at being ignored by a Liberal Government: the National Service League would now be discredited, and the Referendum would be buried under a pile of opprobrious memories.
If the militant suffragists are incapable of a coup ds main, and of course they are, persuasion is their only possible chance of success. If they persuade the nation to believe in woman suffrage, they will undoubtedly get it, and then violence might even bring the culmination quicker. So long as they fail to persuade or educate the nation, they are advertising what the public does not want ; and the more the violence is practised, the more is attention called to the defects of what is offered. This is an absolutely certain pro- cess. The only reason that it is misread is that the few converts loudly proclaim their new faith, while the multitude who find the advertisement a hollow piece of puffery return home and laugh indolently at the ways of the world.
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