the war used arguments
which might have been transferred without the alteration of a single
word to women's suffrage speeches.

I have described on pages 29 and 30 of Women's Suffrage, a Short
History of a Great Movement, the strong impulse which had been given
to the electorial activity of British women by the Corrupt Practices
Act of 1883, which made paid canvassing illegal and otherwise reduced
electorial expenses. Very soon after it came into operation both the
chief political parties organized bands of educated women to act as
canvassers, election agents, etc., in contested elections. The war
stimulated this electorial activity of women. A general election was
held in 1900 and in the absence of husbands, sons and brothers in
South Africa, many wives, mothers and sisters ran the whole election
on their behalf. Several of these were well known anti-suffragists.
Even Mrs. Humphry Ward herself, on the occasion of an important
anti-suffrage meeting in London, excused her absence on the ground
that her presence was required by the exigencies of the pending
election in West Herts, where her son was a candidate. Suffragists
again were not slow to point the moral--if women were fit (and they
obviously were fit) not only to advise, persuade and instruct voters
how to vote but also to conduct election campaigns from start to
finish, they were surely fit to vote themselves.

The death of Queen Victoria in January, 1901, called forth a
spontaneous burst of loyal gratitude, devotion and appreciation from
all parties and all sections of the country. Every leading statesman
among her councillors dwelt on the extraordinary penetration of her
mind, her wide political knowledge, her great practical sagacity, her
grasp of principle, and they combined to acclaim her as the most
trusted of all the constitutional monarchs whom the world had then
seen. How could she be all that they justly claimed for her, if the
whole female sex laboured under the disabilities which, according to
Mrs. Humphry Ward, were imposed by nature and therefore irremediable?
Nevertheless, it must not be supposed, genuine as were these tributes
to Queen Victoria's political sagacity, that her example immediately
cleared out of the minds of the opponents the notion that women were
fitly classed with aliens, felons, idiots and lunatics, as persons who
for reasons of public safety were debarred from the exercise of the
Parliamentary franchise.

The Parliament retu