I had to get a close-hand view of the misery and unhappiness of a man made world, before I reached the point where I could successfully revolt against it.

My childhood was protected by love and a comfortable home. Yet, while still a very young child, I began instinctively to feel that there was something lacking, even in my own home, some false conception of family relations, some incomplete ideal.

Those men and women are fortunate who are born at a time when a great struggle for human freedom is in progress.

Women had always fought for men, and for their children. Now they were ready to fight for their own human rights. Our militant movement was established.

I was fourteen years old when I went to my first suffrage meeting. Returning from school one day, I met my mother just setting out for the meeting, and I begged her to let me go along.

I thought I had been a suffragist before I became a Poor Law Guardian, but now I began to think about the vote in women's hands not only as a right but as a desperate necessity.

I had to get a close-hand view of the misery and unhappiness of a man made world, before I reached the point where I could successfully revolt against it.