ns, many of them lasting several weeks, stopped at
towns and villages on their way, held meetings, distributed literature
and collected funds. It was all a tremendous and unprecedented
success, well organised and well done throughout. (Described in detail
in The Women's Victory.) The Pilgrimage made a very great impression
and was favourably commented on in the organs of the press which had
never helped us before. We finished The Pilgrimage with a mass meeting
in Hyde Park on July 26, where we had seventeen platforms, one for
each of our federations. We asked Mr. Asquith and the leaders of other
political parties to receive a deputation from The Pilgrimage the
following week. They all accepted with the exception of Mr. John
Redmond. When Mr. Asquith received us his demeanor was far less
unfriendly than it had ever been before. He admitted that the offer
of a Private Member's Bill was no equivalent for the loss of a place
in a Government Bill. He said: "Proceed as you have been proceeding,
continue to the end," and said if we could show that "a substantial
majority of the country was favourable to Women's Suffrage, Parliament
would yield, as it had always hitherto done, to the opinion of the
country."

In May, 1914, suffrage ground was broken in the House of Lords by Lord
Selborne and Lord Lytton, who introduced a bill on the lines of the
Conciliation Bill, the latter making one of the most powerful speeches
in our support to which we had ever listened. The Bill was rejected by
104 to 60, but we were more than satisfied by the weight of the
speeches on our side and by the effect produced by them. Another
important event which greatly helped our movement in 1914 was the
protest of the National Trade Union Congress on February 12th against
the Government's failure to redeem its repeated pledges to women and
demanding "a Government Reform Bill which must include the
enfranchisement of women." This was followed by resolutions passed at
the annual conference of the National Labour Party re-affirming its
decision "to oppose any further extension of the franchise to men in
which women were not included."

There must, according to law, have been a General Election in 1915 and
the remarkable progress of the women's cause made us feel confident
that a Parliament would be elected deeply pledged to our support. Our
friends were being elected and our enemies, including that worst type
of enemy, the false friend and the so-called Li