The women proceeded to Parliament Square in small groups so as to keep within the letter of the law.  Some like Vivie carried banners with pitiful devices—­“Where there’s a Bill there’s a Way,” “Women’s Will Beats Asquith’s Skill,” and so on....  She wished she had given more direct attention to these mottoes, but much of this procedure had been got up on impulse and little preparation made.  It was near to four o’clock on a fine November afternoon when the four hundred and fifty women began their movement towards Parliament Square.  A red sun was sinking behind the House of Lords, the blue of the misty buildings and street openings was enhanced by the lemon yellow lights of the newly-lit lamps.  The avenues converging on the Houses of Parliament were choked with people, and vehicles had to be diverted from the streets.  The men in the watching crowd covered the pavements and island “refuges,” leaving the roadways to the little groups of struggling women, and the large force—­a thousand or more—­of opposing police.

It was said at the time that the Government of the day, realizing by their action or inaction in the House of Commons they had provoked this movement of Mrs. Pankhurst’s, had prepared the policy with which to meet it.  As on the eve of a General Election it might be awkward if they made many arrests of women—­perchance Liberal women—­on their way to the House to present a petition or escort a deputation, the police should be instructed instead to repel the Suffragists by force, to give them a taste of that “frightfulness” which became afterwards so familiar a weapon in the Prussian armoury.  Some said also that the Government looked to the crowd which was allowed to form unchecked on the pavements, the crowd of rough men and boys—­costers from Lambeth, longshore men from the barges on the unembanked Westminster riverside, errand boys, soldiers, sailors, clerks returning home, warehousemen, the tag-rag and bob-tail generally of London when a row is brewing—­looked to this crowd to catch fire from the brutality of the police (uniformed and in plain clothes) and really give the women clamouring for the Vote “what for”; teach them a lesson as to what the roused male can do when the female passes the limits of domestic license.  A few deaths might result (and did), and many injuries, but the treatment they received would make such an impression on Mrs. Pankhurst’s followers that they would at last realize the futility of measuring their puny force against the muscle of man.  Force, as the Premier had just said, must be the decisive factor.

But unfortunately for these calculations the large male crowd took quite a different line.  The day had gone by when men and boys were wont to cry to some expounding Suffragette:  “Go home and mind yer biby.”  Dimly these toilers and moilers, these loafers and wasters now understood that women of a courage rarely matched in man were fighting for the cause of all ill-governed, mal-administered, swindled, exploited people of either sex.  The mass of men, in the mass, is chivalrous.  It admires pluck, patience, and persistency.  So the crowd instead of aiding the police to knock sense into the women began to take sides with the buffeted, brutalized and bleeding Suffragettes.