It would not prove logically that she ought to
have the vote, or that anybody ought to have the vote. But it would
prove this: that there was, for some reason, a sacramental reality in
the vote, that the soul could take the vote and feed on it; that it was
in itself a positive and overpowering pleasure, capable of being pitted
against positive and overpowering pain.
I should advise modern agitators, therefore, to give up this particular
method: the method of making very big efforts to get a very small
punishment. It does not really go down at all; the punishment is too
small, and the efforts are too obvious. It has not any of the
effectiveness of the old savage martyrdom, because it does not leave the
victim absolutely alone with his cause, so that his cause alone can
support him. At the same time it has about it that element of the
pantomimic and the absurd, which was the cruellest part of the slaying
and the mocking of the real prophets. St. Peter was crucified upside
down as a huge inhuman joke; but his human seriousness survived the
inhuman joke, because, in whatever posture, he had died for his faith.
The modern martyr of the Pankhurst type courts the absurdity without
making the suffering strong enough to eclipse the absurdity.
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