They invented the Hunger Strike (the prospect of which as an inevitable episode ahead of her, filled Vivie with tremulous dread) to balk the Executive of its idea of turning the prisons of England into Bastilles for locking up these clamant women who had become better lawyers than the men who tried them.

But think what the Hunger Strike and its concomitant, Forcible Feeding, meant in the way of pain and danger to the life of the victim.

The Government were afraid (unless you were an utterly unknown man or woman of the lower classes) of letting you die in prison; so to force them to release you, you had first to refuse for four days all food--the heroic added all drink.

Then to prevent your death--and being human you, the prisoner, must have hoped they were keeping a good look-out on your growing weakness--the prison doctor must intervene with his forcible feeding.

This was a form of torture the Inquisition would have been sorry to have overlooked, and one no doubt that the Bolsheviks have practised with great glee.