ABSTRACT
On 7th August 1914, three days after Britain declared war on Germany, Christabel Pankhurst addressed the issue directly from her position as editor of The Suffragette, the organ ofthe Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU):
In this very early response, there is an uncomfortable ambivalence about Christabel's words for the retrospective reader. Although the war, with its deluge of 'fire, slaughter and ruin' is surely a bad thing, its consequence, the destruction of man-made civilisation is not without its bonuses. The militant branch of the suff rage movement, the WSPU, led and endorsed by Christabel and her mother Emmeline, had been fighting on a smaller scale for just such an end since the early years of the century. Since the sc ale and the cost of the war in human terms could not yet be known in August 1914, it appears to be an appropriate strategy to deploy patriarchal effors to attack patriarchal structures, using the powerful rhetoric for which Christabel had become known: 'The great war. .. .is Nature's vengeance - is God's vengeance upon the people who held women in subjection, and by doing that have destroyed the perfect human balance.,2
However, after the shattering of the British Expeditionary Force at Mons, it became apparent that the war would present a longer term problem, and the Pankhursts began to shift their attitudes. The militant activities of the WSPU were suspended for the duration of the war,3 and instead they adopted a fervently patriotic stance, supporting their former enemies, the liberal politicians, and campaigning for the war effort through their re-titled weekly publication, Britannia.
