I am as you see still at large for in spite of provocation the enemy
will not have me.^32As the festive season approached, Emmeline retired to Ethel Smyth’s cottage
at Hook Heath from where she wrote to Henry Harben, a wealthy barrister who
had dramatically resigned as the Liberal Party candidate in the midst of a by-
election because of his party’s attitude to women’s suffrage. Emmeline, with the
responsibility of raising funds for the WSPU, expressed the hope that Harben
could enlist the support of ‘more monied men’ since the WSPU by-election
campaigns were costly. ‘I hear privately’, she confessed, ‘that there is still a
deficit on the Bow & Bromley election.’ She ended her letter by inviting
Harben and his wife to join her in Paris during the early days of the New Year.
‘It would be so useful to talk over future action with my daughter whose ideas
are always helpful. I should so much like to see more of Mrs. Harben for one
feels attached to the wife of a man who is doing so much as you are.’^33
On 16 December, Asquith had told the House of Commons that the
Manhood Suffrage Bill would have its second reading after Christmas.^34
Millicent Fawcett now swung the weight of the NUWSS behind the proposed
women’s suffrage amendments to the long-delayed bill, and put strong pressure
on the WSPU to suspend militancy in order not to wreck such progress.
Emmeline and Christabel refused to budge, believing that the amendments had
no hope of being carried. Early in January 1913, Emmeline sent a letter to
every WSPU member, explaining the Union position, and emphasising the
importance of further militancy, as a moral duty, after the amendments were
defeated:
There are degrees of militancy. Some women are able to go further
than others in militant action and each woman is the judge of her own
duty so far as that is concerned. To be militant in some way or other is,
however, a moral obligation. It is a duty which every woman will owe
to her own conscience and self-respect, to other women who are less
fortunate than she is herself, and to all those who are to come after her.
If any woman refrains from militant protest against the injury done
by the Government and the House of Commons to women and to the
race, she will share the responsibility for the crime. Submission under
such circumstances will be itself a crime.
I know that the defeat of the Amendments will prove to thousands
of women that to rely only on peaceful, patient methods, is to court
failure, and that militancy is inevitable.
We must ... prepare to meet the crisis before it arises. Will you
therefore tell me (by letter, if it is not possible to do so by word of
mouth), that you are ready to take your share in manifesting in a prac-
tical manner your indignation at the betrayal of our cause.^35HONORARY TREASURER OF THE WSPU AND AGITATOR