The pace quickened to an extent which was bewildering. Where a dozen meetings a year had been the portion of many speakers, they were multiplied by the tens and scores. Organisations had to be expanded. A fighting fund collected, meetings arranged, debates were held all over the country and among all classes. A press, which had never written up the subject while its advocates were law-abiding, tumbled over each other to advertise every movement of all sections of suffragists. It must be admitted the militants gave them plenty of copy, and the constitutionalists had an uneasy sense that their stable companions would kick over the traces in some embarrassing and unexpected way on every new occasion. Still the tide flowed steadily for the principle, and those who had its guidance in Parliament and the country had to use all the strength of the movement in getting it well organised and carefully worked. Societies were federated, and the greatly growing numbers co-ordinated into a machine which could bring the best pressure to bear on Parliament. The well-planned Federation of Scottish Suffrage Societies owed much to Dr. Inglis’ gift of organisation and of taking opportunity by the hand. She was Honorary Secretary to the Scottish Federation, and in those fighting years between 1906 and 1914 she impressed herself much on its policy. In the early years of her professional life, she used gaily to forecast for herself a large and paying practice. Her patients never suffered, but she sacrificed her professional prospects in a large measure for her work for the Franchise. She gave her time freely, and she raised money at critical times by parting with what was of value and in her power to give. Perhaps, the writer may here again give her own reminiscences. Her fellowship with Dr. Inglis was all too rarely social; they met almost entirely in their suffrage work. To know Dr. Inglis at all was to know her well. The transparent sincerity and simplicity of her manner left nothing to be discovered. One felt instinctively she was a comrade one could ‘go tiger-hunting with,’ and to be in her company was to be sustained by a true helpmate. We were asked to speak together. Invited by the elect, and sometimes by the opponents to enjoy hospitality, Dr. Inglis was rarely able to come in time for the baked meats before we ascended the platform, and uttered our platitudes to rooms often empty woodyards, stuck about with a remnant of those who would be saved. She usually met us on the platform, having arrived by the last train, and obliged to leave by the first. But she never came stale or discouraged. There was always the smile at the last set-back, the ready joke at our opponents, the subtle sense that she was out to win, the compelling force of sustained effort that made at least one of her yoke-fellows ashamed of the faint heart that could never hope to win through. Sometimes we travelled back together; more often we would meet next day in St. Giles’ after the daily service, and our walk home was always a cheer. ‘Never mind’ the note to discouragement. ‘Remember this or that in our favour; our next move must be in this direction.’ And the thought was always there (if her unselfconsciousness prevented it being spoken—as one wishes to-day it had been)—‘The meeting went, because you were there and set your whole soul on “willing” it through.’
She had no sympathy with militantism. There was no better fighter with legitimate weapons, but she saw how closely the claim to do wrong that good might come was related to anarchy, and her sense of true citizenship was outraged by law-breaking which, to her clear judgment, could only retard the ultimate triumph of a cause rooted in all that was just and righteous. She was not confused by any cross-currents of admiration for individual courage and self-sacrifice, and her one desire was to see that the Federation was ‘purged’ of all those who belonged to the forces of disintegration.
She had the fruit of her political sagacity, and her fearless pursuit after integrity in deed and in word. When the moment came when she was to go to the battle fronts of the world, a succourer of many, she went in the strength of the Suffrage women of Scotland. They were her shield and buckler, and their loyal support of her work and its ideals was her exceeding great reward. Without their organised strength she could never have called into existence those units and their equipment which have justly earned the praises of nations allied in arms.
With the rise of the militant movement, the whole Suffrage cause passed through a cloud of opprobrium and almost universal objurgation. Women were all tarred with the same stick, and fell under one condemnation. It is now of little moment to recall this, except in as much as it affected Elsie Inglis. The Scottish Suffrage societies, who gave their organisation and their workers to start the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, found that the community desired to forget the unpopular Suffrage, and to remember only the Scottish Hospitals. Speakers for the work that Dr. Inglis was doing were asked to avoid ‘the common cause.’ No one who knew her would consent to deny by implication one of the deepest mainsprings of her work. The Churches were equally timid in aught that gave comfort or consolation to those who were loyal to their Christian social ideal for women. No organised society owes more to the administrative work of women than does the Christian Church throughout the world. No body of administrators have been slower to perceive that women in responsible positions would be a strength to the Church than have been the clergy of the Church. The writer of Uncle Tom’s Cabin puts into the mouth of the clerical type of that day the argument that the Old Testament gave an historic basis for the enslavement of races, and St. Paul had sanctioned slavery in the New Testament. The spirit of Christianity has raised women from a ‘low estate,’ and women owe everything to the results of Christianity; but the ecclesiastical mind has never shaken off the belief that they are under a special curse from the days of Eden, and that St. Paul’s outlook on women in his day was the last revelation as to their future position in a jealously-guarded corporation. Which of us, acquainted with the Church history of our day, but remembers the General Assembly when the women missionaries were first invited to stand by their fellow-workers and be addressed by the Moderator on their labours and sufferings in a common cause? It was a great shock to the fathers and brethren that their sex should not disqualify them from standing in the Assembly, which would have more democratic weight in the visible Church on earth if some of its elected lay members were women serving in the courts of the Church. In this matter and in many others concerning women, the Church is not yet triumphant over its prejudices bedded in the geological structure of Genesis.
In all periods of the enfranchisement struggle there were individual clergy who aided women with their warm advocacy and the helpful direction of thought. Elsie Inglis was a leader of this movement in its connection with a high Christian ideal of the citizenship of women. To those who gathered in St. Margaret’s, the church of Parliament in history, to commemorate all her works begun and ended as a member of Christ’s Church here on earth, it was fitting that Bishop Gore, who had so consistently upheld the cause, should speak of her work as one who had helped to win the equality of women in a democratic, self-governing State.
This memoir would utterly fail to reproduce a picture of Dr. Inglis if it did not emphasise how her spirit was led and disciplined, tempered and steeled, through this long and fiery trial to the goal of a leading ideal. The contest trained her for her splendid achievements in overcoming all obstacles in ministering to the sufferings of nations, ‘rightly struggling to be free.’ Her friend, Miss Wright, says:—
‘We did not always agree. Many were the arguments we had with her, but she was always willing to understand another point of view and willing to allow for difference of opinion. She was very fair-minded and reasonable, and deplored the excesses of the militant suffragettes. She was in no sense a man-hater; to her the world was composed of men and women, and she thought it a mistake to exalt the one unduly over the other. She was never embittered by her struggle for the position of women. She loved the fight, and the endeavour, and to arrive at any point just meant a fresh setting forward to another further goal.
‘From her girlhood onward, her effort was to free and broaden life for other women, to make the world a better place to live in.
‘I had a letter this week from Annie Wilson, Elsie’s great friend. She says, “It seems to me Elsie’s whole life was full of championship of the weak, and she was so strong in maintaining what was right. I feel sure she has inspired many. I remember once saying in connection with some work I was going to begin, ‘I wonder if I shall be able,’ and Elsie saying in her bright way, ‘What man has done man can do.’ I am so glad that she had the opportunity of showing her great administrative capacity, and that her power is known and acknowledged. She is a great woman. I cannot tell you what it will be not to have her welcome to look forward to when I come home.”
‘Elsie had in many respects what is, perhaps wrongly, called a man’s mind. She was an Imperialist in the very best sense, and had high ideals for her country and people. She was a very womanly woman, never affecting mannish ways as a pose. If she seemed a strong-minded woman it was because she had strenuous work to do. She was never “a lone woman.” She was always one of a family, and in the heart of the family. Elsie always had the lovingest appreciation and backing from her nearest and dearest, and that a wide and varied circle. So, also, she did not need to fight for her position; it has been said of her, “Whenever she began to speak her pleasant well-bred accent and manner gained her a hearing.” She was ever a fighter, but it was because she wanted those out in the cold and darkness to come into the love and light which she herself experienced and sought after always more fully.
‘We looked forward to more frequent meetings when working days were done. Now she has gone forward to the great work beyond:
‘“Somewhere, surely, afar
In the sounding labour home vast
Of being, is practised that strength—
Zealous, beneficent, firm.”’