means; nor can any serious statesman yield to violence and intimidation. Yet there is nothing in this temporary aberration to strengthen the anti-Feminist position. It was an error of judgment and a misreading of history. I am well acquainted with many of the ladies who did these regrettable things, and I know that the suggestion of “hysteria” is an insult. It is, however, useless to discuss this question further. Women will be enfranchised in England within a few years, and in all civilised nations within a quarter of a century.
Then will begin the campaign for the right to sit in Parliament, even in the Ministry. From sheer force of prejudice the great majority of the enfranchised women will resist this further claim, and the long story of education and agitation will be repeated. This is the outcome of our habit of persistently compromising with false traditions instead of frankly discarding them. The immortal jokes about women will be retailed in the House of Commons by our legislators; the same dark warnings will come from scientific Cassandras who have felt social influence; the same tragic whispers about “what every woman knows” will be heard in drawing-rooms. Then, about the year 1930, we will discover that woman is really capable of undertaking the not very exacting duties of the average Member of Parliament,—if we have not in the meantime abolished these aimless long debates on subjects which all approach with a fixed conviction,—and that it may not be impossible to find a
