Their wives were even more uncompromising than the Ministers. I have no doubt the New Militants thought to strike at the fathers through the mothers, and the reasoning seemed tolerably sound. I admit I expected at first to find Mrs. Rawnsley and Mrs. Jefferson calling for quarter before their husbands, and if the New Militants miscalculated, I miscalculated with them. I had not expected their policy of abduction to arouse much active sympathy, but the bitter, uncompromising resentment it evoked far surpassed my anticipations. Had the perpetrators been discovered, I believe they would have been lynched in the street; and without going to such lengths, I feel confident that the mothers themselves would have sacrificed their own children rather than yield a single inch to women who had so outraged every maternal instinct. Had their own feelings inclined to surrender, Rawnsley, Jefferson, and Roden would have surrendered only over their wives' bodies.
"We shall go on exactly as before," Arthur told me when I asked his plans. "The enemy has varied its usual form of communication; this is what I have received."
"We shall be glad to know _within the next ten days_ (expiring Saturday) when the Government will guarantee the introduction of a bill to give women the parliamentary vote on the same terms as it is enjoyed by men."
"My campaign in the Midlands is all arranged," was the reply, "and will go forward in due course."
"Anything that can be done will be done. I am offering two thousand pounds reward...."
"It's more than half public already. We tried to keep it secret, as you know. To avoid giving them a free advertisement. However, they've advertised themselves by broad hints in the _New Militant_; the gutter-press has taken it up until half England knows and the other half suspects. Rawnsley's seeing the _Times_, and you'll have the whole story in to-morrow's papers. I shall confirm it at Birmingham next week." He paused, and drummed with his fingers on the library table. "I can't answer for the men, but there's not a mother in the length and breadth of the land who won't be on our side when the story comes out."
The ultimate collapse of the whole New Militant campaign has proved his sagacity as a prophet.