THE MORNING POST FEBRUARY 7 1913

"SPIRITUAL WEAPONS" IN WARFARE REMARKABLE MANIFESTO

The members of the West London Ethical Society, in a manifesto adopted at a meeting of the Ethical Church Bayswater, call on Suffragists to redouble their sacrifice, energy, and ingenuity, in attempts to force the Government to introduce a Bill to enfranchise women. They regret that militancy in the Suffrage movement in recent months instead of inventing new means of challenging public opinion by brave and dramatic appeals to the conscience of the community, has taken to smashing window, destroying letters, and threatening worse calamities of a material sort. Such a policy will soon get beyond the control of responsible leaders. It will fascinate and tempt the mentally unbalanced, and arouse disgust and resentment in the minds of the unimaginative public. Therefore they "beg to submit the following as instances of further spiritual weapons for challenging public attention, enlightening the blind and gaining enthusiastic support from among the indifferent." The first spiritual weapon suggested is as follows: "Let the women in groups of a hundred or a thousand march an hour before each service to Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral, and all the other centres where England through her Established Church preaches mercy, justice, and righteousness. Let them station themselves in line on each side of the entrances, clad in the deepest mourning, and wearing some such symbolical challenge to the public eye as scarves of the orange colour worn by the ascetics of the East. Let the women then pass into the churches, and after the service again station themselves outside the doors. Also let them approach in a body the state officials of the respective churches, and demand that their claims be championed in the pulpit. If these means of appeal to the professed humanity of England fail let the women as a last resort cry out during the church service, in a loud voice expressive of their bitter grief and righteous indignation, the Kyrie Eleison, "Lord, have mercy upon us; Christ, have mercy upon us; Lord, have mercy upon us," as did worshippers when the Christian faith was far more alive than now." Such methods, "which combine the wisdom of the serpent with the harmlessness of the dove," can be used, the manifesto states, at theatres, concerts, and the opera. Women are also advised to organise spiritual attacks on lawyers at the Courts and in their Offices. In order that they may become great speakers, debaters, and arguers in their own cause, Suffragists are counselled to equip themselves more thoroughly in the knowledge of history, biology, physchology, law, and economics. "Let them work for eight or ten hours a day to become irresistible logicians and presenters of facts and principles." The last spiritual weapon cited in the manifesto is a suggestion to Suffragists to make spiritual raids, "as they would on the Prime Minister or the Chancellor of the Exchequer," on able women of specialised equipment in England, the aim being to get 200 such women to devote their whole time to the conversion of the indifferent and the enlightenment of the dull-witted. Women of the greatest artistic and dramatic genius are likewise to be retained, "by adequate emolument," so that they may electrify the millions "by means of art in our theatres and in our streets, filling the public with shame and horror by bringing home to their imagination and their heart the outrage and injury to humanity involved in the subjection of women."