Physical Force and Democracy.
[Suffrage] Royden, A. Maude. Physical Force and Democracy. [London]: The National Union of
Women’s Suffrage Societies, 1912.
8vo.; 16 pp.; printed wrappers; staples removed and all held together with modern stitching.
First edition of this scarce work in support of woman suffrage.
Royden was elected to the executive committee of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies in
1909, and from 1912 to 1914 edited the Common Cause, the organ of the union. She broke, however, with
the NUWSS over its support for the war effort. She writes herein: "Every advance in the direction of
freedom, every extension of justice to the unrepresented and unheard makes less the possibility of such
intolerable wrongs. Every point of view will at least be heard, and every claim weighed. Here are the
elements of good government. For the resort to physical force is always a confession of failure" (p. 11).
OCLC records three copies, all in European institutions: at the BL and the London Metropolitan
University in the UK, and the Aletta Institute for Women’s History in the Netherlands
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