But the leaders of the militant women ordered (and were
obeyed) that no attacks on life should be part of the Woman's
militant programme. Property might be destroyed, especially such as
did not impoverish the poor; but there were to be no railway
accidents, no sinking of ships, no violent deeds dangerous to life.
At the height and greatest bitterness of militancy no statesman's
life was in danger.
The only recklessness about life was in the militant women. They
risked and sometimes lost their lives in carrying out their
protests. They invented the Hunger Strike (the prospect of which as
an inevitable episode ahead of her, filled Vivie with tremulous
dread) to balk the Executive of its idea of turning the prisons of
England into Bastilles for locking up these clamant women who had
become better lawyers than the men who tried them. But think what
the Hunger Strike and its concomitant, Forcible Feeding, meant in
the way of pain and danger to the life of the victim. The Government
were afraid (unless you were an utterly unknown man or woman of the
lower classes) of letting you die in prison; so to force them to
release you, you had first to refuse for four days all food--the
heroic added all drink. Then to prevent your death--and being human
you, the prisoner, must have hoped they were keeping a good look-out
on your growing weakness--the prison doctor must intervene with his
forcible feeding.
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