intained) an excuse for pots of beer, but are
a sacred solemnity to which new female worshipers may kneel; that the
talkative patriots in the tavern are not only admirable but enviable;
that talk is not a waste of time, and therefore (as a consequence,
surely) that taverns are not a waste of money. All we men had grown used
to our wives and mothers, and grandmothers, and great aunts all
pouring a chorus of contempt upon our hobbies of sport, drink and party
politics. And now comes Miss Pankhurst with tears in her eyes, owning
that all the women were wrong and all the men were right; humbly
imploring to be admitted into so much as an outer court, from which she
may catch a glimpse of those masculine merits which her erring sisters
had so thoughtlessly scorned.

Now this development naturally perturbs and even paralyzes us. Males,
like females, in the course of that old fight between the public and
private house, had indulged in overstatement and extravagance, feeling
that they must keep up their end of the see-saw. We told our wives that
Parliament had sat late on most essential business; but it never crossed
our minds that our wives would believe it. We said that everyone must
have a vote in the country; similarly our wives said that no one must
have a pipe in the drawing room. In both cases the idea was the same.
"It does not matter much, but if you let those things slide there
is chaos." We said that Lord Huggins or Mr. Buggins was absolutely
necessary to the country. We knew quite well that nothing is necessary
to the country except that the men should be men and the women women.
We knew this; we thought the women knew it even more clearly; and we
thought the women would say it. Suddenly, without warning, the women
have begun to say all the nonsense that we ourselves hardly believed
when we said it. The solemnity of politics; the necessity of votes;
the necessity of Huggins; the necessity of Buggins; all these flow in a
pellucid stream from the lips of all the suffragette speakers. I suppose
in every fight, however old, one has a vague aspiration to conquer; but
we never wanted to conquer women so completely as this. We only expected
that they might leave us a little more margin for our nonsense; we never
expected that they would accept it seriously as sense. Therefore I am
all at sea about the existing situation; I scarcely know whether to be
relieved or enraged by this substitution of the feeble platform lecture
fo