be introduced into Parliament.
I voted against the so-called Conciliation Bill which proposed to give
the vote to every woman of property if she chose to take the trouble to
get it, and at the same time enfranchise only about one-tenth or
one-fifteenth of the working women of the country. That was simply a
roundabout way of doubling the plural voters and no democrat could
possibly support it, so long as there remained a single alternative.
The solution that most appeals to me is the one embodied in the
Dickinson Bill, that is to say, a measure conferring the vote on women
householders and on the wives of married electors; and I believe that
it is in that form that woman suffrage will eventually come in this
country. How soon it will come depends very largely on how soon the
militants come to their senses.

I say, unhesitatingly, that the main obstacle to women getting the vote
is militancy and nothing else. Its practitioners really seem to think
that they can terrorize and pinprick Parliament into giving it to them;
and until they learn something of the people they are dealing with,
their whole agitation, so far as the House of Commons is concerned, is
simply and utterly damned. It is perfectly astonishing to recall with
what diabolical ingenuity they have contrived to infuriate all their
opponents, to alienate all their sympathizers, and to stir up against
themselves every prejudice in the average man's breast. A few years ago
they found three-fourths of the Liberal M.P.'s on their side. They at
once proceeded to cudgel their brains as to how they could possibly
drive them into the enemy's camp. They rightly decided that this could
not be done more effectually than by insulting and assaulting the Prime
Minister, the chief of the Party, and a leader for whom all his
colleagues and followers feel an unbounded admiration, regard, and
affection. When they had thus successfully estranged the majority of
Liberals they began to study the political situation a little more
closely. They saw that the Irish Nationalists were very powerful
factors in the Ministerial Coalition. The next problem, therefore, was
how to destroy the last chance that the Irish Nationalists would
support their cause. They achieved this triumphantly first by making
trouble in Belfast where the only Nationalist member is or was a strong
Suffragist, and secondly by going to Dublin when all Nationalist
Ireland had assembled to welcome Mr. Asquith, throwing