SOURCE: “Militant Suffragists,” in The World's Greatest Speeches, edited by Lewis Copeland, Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1942, pp. 196-8.

In the following excerpt, originally delivered as an address in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1913, Pankhurst discusses differences between the struggle for women's rights in England and America and expresses her willingness to die for her cause.

I do not come here as an advocate, because whatever position the suffrage movement may occupy in the United States of America, in England it has passed beyond the realm of advocacy and it has entered into the sphere of practical politics. It has become the subject of revolution and civil war, and so to-night I am not here to advocate woman suffrage. American suffragists can do that very well for themselves. I am here as a soldier who has temporarily left the field of battle in order to explain—it seems strange it...