the Speaker
offered his private box to Dr. Jacobs and her friends. Prime Minister
Cort van Linden threatened that if a vote were permitted on woman
suffrage he would withdraw the whole constitution. The members of
Parliament were so afraid they would lose universal male suffrage
that they gave up this amendment and the constitution was adopted
without it. It did, however, make the valuable concession that it
should be possible for the Parliament to grant the suffrage to women
at any time without submitting it to the voters as part of the
constitution. It also contained the remarkable provision that women
should be eligible to election to the Parliament and all
representative bodies, although they had not a scrap of suffrage.

The exclusion of women was received with the disapproval of the
country and in the election campaign of 1918 the demand of all the
non-clerical parties was for woman suffrage. At the opening of
Parliament H. P. Marchant, leader of the Constitutional Democrats,
introduced a bill for the complete enfranchisement of women. Early in
November, 1918, all Europe was alarmed by the revolution in Russia and
The Netherlands was threatened. There was a demand for woman suffrage
at once as a deterrent. The Government agreed and took up Mr.
Marchant's bill but the danger passed and nothing was done. By
February, 1919, the suffragists were obliged to hold another mass
meeting and demonstration at The Hague and assure the Government that
they would rouse the country. The Speaker then brought in the bill,
which was discussed in April, and on May 9 universal suffrage for
women on the same terms as possessed by men was accepted by a vote of
64 to 10 by the Second Chamber. The following July it passed the First
Chamber with five dissenting votes and was signed by the Queen on
September 8.

In 1918 a woman had been elected to the Second Chamber and in 1920 one
was elected to the First Chamber, and there were 36 on County Councils
and 88 on Municipal councils, chosen by men before women had yet
voted.

BELGIUM.

On November 23, 1918, five days after the armistice which ended the
World War the National Federation for Woman Suffrage in Belgium
resumed its activities with an open letter to the Labor Party,
referring to their manifesto for universal suffrage and reminding them
that this included women. A little later it addressed an appeal to the
newly established Government and started a petition. In the midst of