[German Cartoon]

[Illustration:  Opening of the Bathing Season—­Feb. 18

_—­From Kladderadatsch, Berlin._

The German stickle-backs worry the “Ruler of the Seas.”]

What Is Our Duty?

By Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst

The position of the British suffragettes, who suspended their militant program and are zealously supporting the cause of the Allies, is stated in this speech by Mrs. Pankhurst, delivered in the Sun Hall, Liverpool, and reported in The Suffragette of April 23, 1915.

I think that throughout our agitation for the franchise for political emancipation, on platforms and on other places—­even in prisons—­we have talked about rights, and fought for rights; at the same time we have always coupled with the claim for rights clear statements as to duty.  We have never lost sight of the fact that to possess rights puts upon human beings grave responsibilities and serious duties.  We have fought for rights because, in order to perform your duty and fulfill your responsibilities properly, in time of peace, you must have certain citizen rights.  When the State is in danger, when the very liberties in your possession are imperiled, is, above all, the time to think of duty.  And so, when the war broke out, some of us who, convalescing after our fights, decided that one of the duties of the Women’s Social and Political Union in war time was to talk to men about their duty to the nation—­the duty of fighting to preserve the independence of our country, to preserve what our forefathers had won for us, and to protect the nation from foreign invasion.

There are people who say, “What right have women to talk to men about fighting for their country, since women are not, according to the custom of civilization, called upon to fight?” That used to be said to us in times of peace.  Certainly women have the right to say to men, “Are you going to fight to defend your country and redeem your promise to women?”

Men have said to women, not only that they fight to defend their country, but that they protect women from all the dangers and difficulties of life, and they are proud to be in the position to do it.  Why, then, we say to those men, “You are indeed now put to the test.  The men of Belgium, the men of France, the men of Serbia, however willing they were to protect women from the things that are most horrible—­and more horrible to women than death itself—­have not been able to do it.”

It is only by an accident, or a series of accidents, for which no man here has the right to take credit, that British women on British soil are not now enduring the horrors endured by the women of France, the women of Belgium, and the women of Serbia.  The least that men can do is that every man of fighting age should prepare himself to redeem his word to women, and to make ready to do his best, to save the mothers, the wives, and the daughters of Great Britain from outrage too horrible even to think of.