But now that I see our own kinswomen across the sea sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind—sowing seeds of lawlessness which we may see in our own day, I greatly fear, blossoming in an anarchism more terrible than anything yet known to history—and when I see our own women protesting feebly or not at all, and even, to some extent, encouraging, I have not a cent to contribute nor a word of sympathy for any association of women which does not publicly and earnestly protest against such a line of procedure. It resembles the kicking and biting of spoiled children, the raving and gibbering of insane and idiots—and the unbridled license of the most abandoned criminals. All these classes think solely of what they want, and self-constitute themselves arbiters of what they should have. What it may cost other human beings, innocent though they be, for them to grasp at the objects of their desire by whatever means may come to hand, does not touch their minds; and so it would seem to be with those women of England; and so, also, with those of our own women who condone their offenses—who would condone such action in any cause.
Mrs. White here indicates both the responsibility of sincere, educated, and thoughtful suffragists and an effective method whereby they may hold the official organizations to their duty. Not a dollar should be subscribed to their work until they have pledged themselves that no part of their funds shall go to the support of lawlessness, and have made as definite a disclaimer of sympathy and intention as the Pennsylvania society, the action of which, at this time, is a patriotic public service of the highest order.
We have nothing but respect for the women of America who are earnestly convinced that the extension of the suffrage gives promise of a brighter day for humanity, and we take this opportunity to record our abhorrence not only of violence by women but of such interference with peaceable parades as disgraced the city of Washington on the third of March. In these days of turbulence of action and of thought, there is no securer anchorage to the mind than Chatham’s saying, “Where law ends, tyranny begins.”
NEWSPAPER INVASION OF PRIVACY
IS THE PAUL PRY AND PEEPING TOM TYPE OF REPORTING ON THE INCREASE?
THE newspapers printed the initial paragraph of Mr. Pierpont Morgan’s will, and some of them made it the theme of very respectful and profitable comment. It was as intimate a statement as can well be imagined, a solemn committal of the soul of the maker of the will into the hands of his Saviour, and a charge to his children to maintain and defend “the blessed doctrine of the complete atonement for sin through the blood of Jesus Christ.”
But Mr. Morgan was a public person. All of us, in that sense, became members of his family. We had made our way to his bedside as he lay dying in Rome, and we expected to be given his will to read as soon as his wife and son and daughters had read it. They were obliged to give it to us: what could they do? Mr. Morgan, by reason of his great wealth and his distinguished public service had lost the privilege of privacy.
At the same time, there were those who read the will, and especially the beginning of it, with a certain sense of embarrassment, as if they had been found reading a neighbor’s private letters. The situation is one which arises in connection with some modern biographies and autobiographies, but the newspapers present it to our conscience every day. Now is abundantly fulfilled the prediction of an old book which said, “There is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.” When the book promises further that that which is spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops, we seem to see the reporter in the midst of his characteristic activities. All the closet doors are now wide open; or, if they are shut and locked against us, there are dictagraphs inside.
The other day at a great college a student was found dead in bed. The reporter who put the fact in the paper reported also that the president and the dean, and other persons much older and perhaps wiser than himself, had done their best to keep the matter private. Their endeavors appear to have been entirely for the sake of the student’s family and friends. There was no suspicion of anything wrong except such as the reporter himself conveyed to heighten the interest. These kindly endeavors the reporter, according to his own frank and impudent confession, had frustrated. No purpose seems to have been served by the publication except that the reporter got his money for it.
The other day, in the midst of a suit for divorce, the wife was stricken with a mortal disease, and the husband was sent for. She was unconscious when he arrived, and he knelt by her bedside, praying. Then she opened her eyes and saw him, and told him that she loved him still. Behind the door was a reporter, with his paper in one hand and his pencil in the other, putting down what he saw and heard through the crack, and going out to shout it through a megaphone in the street.