The Government and the country were therefore, in the third year of the war, face to face with the impossible position that if circumstances necessitated an appeal to the country there was in existence no register of voters which could in any sense be looked upon as representative of the manhood of the nation. The elderly, the infirm, the shirker, the crank, who had remained at home evading military service, and "the conscientious objector," would remain on the old and obsolete register in full numerical strength; the young manhood of the nation who were fighting for it in the Navy, or the Air Service, or on the dreary swamps of Flanders, or the tremendous battlefields round Ypres or on the Somme, would in large proportion have forfeited their parliamentary votes in consequence of the services they were rendering to their country. It was an intolerable situation. By-elections which from time to time took place illustrated the extraordinarily non-representative character of the old register. Candidates and agents reported the existence of street after street in which only a handful of voters remained. It would have been impossible to dissolve on such a register, and even if it had been possible, Mr. Asquith had himself declared that a Parliament elected on such a register would be "lacking in moral sanction."
It will be remembered that the House elected in 1910 had passed an Act limiting the duration of all future Parliaments to five years. If there had been no war the dissolution must therefore have taken place by 1915; but as a General Election, except on sheer necessity, could not be contemplated during the war, the operation of the five years' limit was more than once suspended by legislation. This, however, was only postponing the problem, and did not afford any solution of it.
Mr. Asquith's first War Cabinet had suddenly collapsed in May, 1915, and had been succeeded by the first Coalition Government. Mr. Asquith remained Prime Minister, but among his colleagues were now found representatives of the three chief parties—Liberal, Conservative, and Labour. Mr. Redmond, as leader of the Irish Nationalists, was also asked to join it, but declined to do so. The changes involved in this reconstitution of the Government were in several ways favourable to the suffrage movement: not a few of our most bigoted opponents were among the Liberals who were shed by Mr. Asquith when he formed his Coalition Government, whilst among his new colleagues were now to be found convinced suffragists, such as Mr. A. J. Balfour, Mr. Bonar Law, Lord Robert Cecil, Lord Lytton, Lord Selborne, Mr. Arthur Henderson, etc. The formation of the coalition was favourable to us in another sense. Party discipline and party passion had always been inimical to our movement. "Yes, I am your friend, but I am not prepared to break up my party in order to support you," said one party leader. "Yes, I am your friend, but I tell you frankly, you must not count on my vote if the success of women's suffrage would mean the withdrawal from public life of my leader, Mr. Asquith," said another. I had been accustomed to say of the two chief parties, Liberal and Conservative, that from the suffrage point of view the first was an army without generals, and the second was generals without an army. The Coalition gave us the immense advantage of bringing these two indispensable elements of success together, and parliamentary suffragists became equally strong in both officers and men. The commander-in-chief, Mr. Asquith, was still our opponent, but, as described in the last chapter, we began to see signs that even he was prepared to recognize that he was beaten, and to ask for an armistice.
When 1916 arrived no solution of the franchise problem had been found; the creation of a new register before a General Election could be held was generally recognized as necessary, but there were no signs of agreement upon the principles on which it should be based. The end of the war seemed as far off as ever. Compulsory military service for men had been adopted, and this strengthened the demand for manhood suffrage on the very reasonable ground that if a man could be compelled to offer his life for his country, he should at least have some influence, as a voter, in controlling the policy which might cause such a sacrifice to be called for.
Contemporaneously with these events and new developments, Sir Edward Carson and a group of his parliamentary supporters were urging with considerable vigour that there should be a new franchise based on military service. In a sense he had a strong position, for it was an obvious absurdity that men offering their lives for their country should incidentally to the fulfilment of that service be struck off the parliamentary register, while every waster and do-nothing who managed to stay at home maintaining his occupation franchise would have the vote. We made some unsuccessful efforts to induce Sir Edward Carson so to define his definition of "service" as to include the services of women. Meanwhile, there was a great deal of discussion socially and in the Press about the possibility of basing the vote on national service of some kind.
On May 4th, 1916, we addressed a careful letter to Mr. Asquith on the points raised by the obsolete register and the necessity for a new one, and also for a new qualification for the franchise. We said that nothing was farther from our intention than to press our claim at such a moment if the Government was contemplating legislation simply to replace on the register those men who had lost their qualification in consequence of their service in the Navy or Army, or in munition areas in parts of the country other than those where they had formerly resided. But we stated that if the Government intended to meet the situation by altering the whole basis of the parliamentary franchise and founding it on national service, whether naval, military, or industrial, we should then use our utmost endeavours to induce a favourable consideration at the same time of the national services of women. After referring to some of the very important work of women during the war, we added:
"When the Government deals with the franchise, an opportunity will present itself of dealing with it on wider lines than by the simple removal of what may be called the accidental disqualification of a large body of the best men in the country, and we trust that you may include in your Bill clauses which would remove the disabilities under which women now labour. An agreed Bill on these lines would, we are confident, receive a very wide measure of support throughout the country. Our movement has received very great accessions of strength during recent months, former opponents now declaring themselves on our side, or, at any rate, withdrawing their opposition. The change of tone in the Press is most marked.... The view has been widely expressed in a great variety of organs of public opinion that the continued exclusion of women from representation will ... be an impossibility after the war."
Mr. Asquith replied almost immediately.
"10, Downing Street,
"Whitehall, S.W.,
"May 7th, 1916.
"Dear Mrs. Fawcett,