new Parliament which assembled in January, 1911. Our
Bill had been carried on its second reading in 1910 by a majority of
110 but after the second General Election of 1910 it secured on May 5,
1911, a majority of 167; there were 55 pairs, only 88 members of
Parliament going into the Lobby against us. The Bill on each of these
occasions was of a very limited character; it proposed to enfranchise
women-householders, widows and spinsters and would only have added
about a million women to the Parliamentary register. It was called the
Conciliation Bill, because it sought to conciliate the differences
between different types of suffragists in the House of Commons, from
the extreme Conservative who only cared for the representation of
women of property, to the extreme Radical who demanded the
enfranchisement of every woman. A committee was formed to promote the
success of this bill in Parliament of which the Earl of Lytton was
Chairman and Mr. H. N. Brailsford Hon. Sec. It was believed that the
bill represented the greatest common measure of the House of Commons'
belief in women's votes. The Labour Party were strongly in favour of a
much wider enfranchisement of women but generously waived their own
preferences in order, as they believed, to get some sort of
representation for women on the Statute Book. Almost immediately after
this large majority for the second reading of the Conciliation Bill in
May, 1911, an official announcement was made by the Government that
Mr. Asquith's promise of the previous November that an opportunity
should be afforded for proceeding with the bill in all its stages
would be fulfilled in the session of 1912.

We were then in the most favourable position we had ever occupied; the
passing of the Women's Suffrage Bill in the near future seemed a
certainty. The "militants" had suspended all their methods of violence
in order to give the Conciliation Bill a chance, and, as just
described, it had passed its second reading debate with a majority of
167 and time for "proceeding effectively" with a similar Bill in all
its stages had been promised. All the suffrage societies were working
harmoniously for the same Bill and the Women's Liberal Federation were
cooperating with the suffrage societies, when suddenly, like a bolt
from the blue, Mr. Asquith dealt us a characteristic blow. In reply to
a deputation from the People's Suffrage Federation early in November
he announced his intention of introducing durin