May 16th, 1913.

WE MAKE no comment on the case of the Women's Social and Political Union which is now under trial, but we cannot refrain from noticing the comical intervention of the Labour leaders. In particular Mr Ramsay Macdonald [sic] and Mr Keir Hardie have come forward as champions of the liberty of the Press, and, in order to show their prowess, intend to print and publish the banned organ of the Union, the Suffragette. We are as much concerned as Mr Macdonald for the liberty of the Press, but we fail to see how they are going to vindicate it. The whole purpose of the Suffragette was to advance the propaganda of militancy. Mr Macdonald is dead against the methods of the militants, and the paper which he is about to edit and manage will consequently be the Suffragette in name only. Nothing that will remind its readers of its former recklessness and savagery will be allowed to escape the censorship of Mr Macdonald's blue pencil. If the militants are content to go on reading a paper in which all the old fire has been extinguished, it will surprise us as much as anything in their strange, eventful history has surprised us. But the strangest thing of all is that a gentleman of Mr Macdonald's capacity should not see the ludicrous ineptitude of the scheme on which he has now embarked. Yesterday, however, when he opened his morning paper, he would, perhaps realize the egregious absurdity of his undertaking, for the Home Office made it quite clear that it had never intended to suppress any issue of the Suffragette before the nature of its contents had been seen.