Fortunately before the real fighting began, and no doubt as a stroke of policy on the part of some Police Inspector, Mrs. Pankhurst convoying the two frail old ladies—­Dr. Garret Anderson and Susan Knipper-Totes—­champions of the Vote when Woman Suffrage was outside practical politics—­had reached the steps of the Strangers’ entrance to the House of Commons.  From this point of ’vantage a few of the older leaders of the deputation were able to witness the four or five hours’ struggle in and around Parliament Square, the Abbey, Parliament Street, Great George Street which made Black Friday one of the note-worthy days in British history—­though, more nostro, it will be long before it is inserted in school books.

Here, while something like panic signalized the Legislative Chamber and Cabinet ministers scurried in and out like flurried rabbits and finally took refuge in their private rooms—­here was fought out the decisive battle between physical and moral force over the suffrage question.  The women were so exaltees that they were ready to face death for their cause.  The police were so exasperated that they saw red and some went mad with sex mania.  It was a horrible spectacle in detail.  Men with foam on their moustaches were gripping women by the breasts, tearing open their clothing, and proceeding to rabid indecencies.  Or, if not sex-mad, they twisted their arms, turned back their thumbs to dislocation, rained blows with fists on pale faces, covering them with blood.  They tore out golden hair or thin grey locks with equal disregard.  Mounted police were summoned to overawe the crowd, which by this time whether suffragist and female, or neutral, non-committal and male, was giving the police on foot a very nasty time.  The four hundred and fifty women of the original impulse had increased to several thousand.  Dusk had long since deepened into a night lit up with arc lamps and the golden radiance of great gas-lamp clusters.  Flares were lighted to enable the police to see better what they were doing and who were their assailants.  But the women showed complete indifference to the horses; and the horses with that exquisite forbearance that the horse can show to the distraught human, did their utmost not to trample on small feet and outspread hands.

Here and there humanity asserted itself.  One policeman—­helmetless, his fair, blond face scratched and bleeding—­had in berserkr rage felled a young woman in the semi-darkness.  He bore his senseless victim into the shelter of some nook or cloister and turned on her his bull’s eye lantern.  She was a beautiful creature, in private life a waitress at a tea shop.  Her hat was gone and her hair streamed over her drooping face and slender shoulders.  The policeman overcome with remorse exclaimed—­mentioning the Home Secretary’s name “——­ be damned; this ain’t the job for a decent man.”  The Suffragette revived under his care.  He escorted her home, resigned from the police force, married her and I believe has lived happily ever afterwards, if he was not killed in the War.