"I have received your letter of the 4th. I need not assure you how deeply my colleagues and I recognize and appreciate the magnificent contribution which the women of the United Kingdom have made to the maintenance of our country's cause.
"No such legislation as you refer to is at present in contemplation; but if, and when, it should become necessary to undertake it, you may be certain that the considerations set out in your letter will be fully and impartially weighed without any prejudgment from the controversies of the past.
"Yours very faithfully,
"H. H. Asquith."
This reply was, we considered, very much more encouraging than any previous letter which we had received from Mr. Asquith. There were some suffragists who did not fail to point out that it promised us nothing. This we did not dispute, but we felt, all the same, that the letter indicated that the turn of the tide in the suffrage direction was taking effect, and that vessels which had long been high and dry on the sandbanks of prejudice were beginning to be floated, and would soon swing round.
On May 7th, Mr. Asquith had said in his letter, "no such legislation as you refer to is at present in contemplation." Nevertheless, it was plain two weeks later from the Prime Minister's replies to questions in the House that this attitude had already been abandoned. The Government then began a series of futile efforts to deal with the problems presented by the situation just described by means of "Special Register" Bills. None of these plans secured the support of the House of Commons. Mr. Asquith shrank from the thorough-going method of solving the problem by introducing a Reform Bill which should frankly provide a new basis for the suffrage. Such a course, he said, would bring the House "face to face with another most formidable proposition," the question of women's suffrage. Sir Edward Carson was meanwhile pressing for a new franchise giving the vote to all sailors, soldiers, and airmen, on the ground of their services. The comment of the Press on this was: "It is clear that the Bill cannot include the soldiers and exclude the women." The hesitation and reluctance of the Government to face the facts went on all through July. It was the same attitude which had caused the fiasco of the Government Bill in January, 1913 when an attempt had been made to pass a Reform Bill at the tail-end of a Session already thirteen months long by calling it a Registration Bill. On July 12th, 1916, Mr. Asquith said that the Government, not having been able to find any practical and non-controversial solution of the registration question, proposed that the House itself should settle the matter. This was not a popular method of proceeding, but the proposition was wrapped up with Mr. Asquith's well-known skill as a master of parliamentary oratory; and though the House grumbled it was not in revolt. A week later, however, the same theme was expounded with much less than the Prime Minister's tact by Mr. Herbert Samuel, another well-known antisuffragist, who enraged the House of Commons by saying in effect the same thing as Mr. Asquith, but in a manner which made it plain, even to the wayfaring man, that it was because the difficulty was insoluble that the Government requested the House of Commons to solve it. He set forth all the difficulties. Something had got to be done; the old register was useless; a new register on the old basis would be nearly as bad, since it would disfranchise our fighting men; and therefore the House would have to take up the difficult controversial points of women's suffrage, plural voting, adult suffrage, and redistribution. The indignation of the House on being told bluntly that the problem was handed to them to solve because it was insoluble caused it to reject the Government proposal; the matter was thrown back by the House to the Cabinet, who were told to do their own job; they therefore began another period of "lengthy consideration."
In the previous spring a leading member of our Executive Committee, Miss Rathbone, now President of the N.U.S.E.C.,[7] had formed a consultative committee of constitutional women's suffrage societies, representative of twenty different organizations. This consultative committee sought and obtained early in August an interview with Lord Robert Cecil and Mr. Bonar Law. The deputation urged the necessity for the enfranchisement of women in time for them to take part in the election of the Parliament which would have to deal with the problems of reconstruction after the war; they also repeated that if the new register simply replaced on the roll of voters those men who had forfeited their vote in consequence of their patriotic services, we should not, during the war, raise the question of women's suffrage at all; but if the whole basis of the suffrage were changed we should press the consideration of women's claims with all the strength at our command. Mr. Bonar Law expressed satisfaction with this attitude, but asked if the suffrage societies would stand aside if the period of residence required of future male voters was reduced from twelve months to three. The reply was in the negative, because this change would in reality be equivalent to a new suffrage, and would add many thousands of men to the roll of voters. Lord Robert Cecil warmly supported this view, and said that the reduction in the qualifying period would constitute a long step towards manhood suffrage, and would seriously injure the position of women if nothing were done for them at the same time.
We were getting now very near the keep of the antisuffrage fortress. We heard of very prolonged and ardent discussions in the Cabinet on our question, during which the protagonists on our side were Mr. Lloyd George, Lord Robert Cecil, and Mr. Arthur Henderson, representing severally the Liberal, Conservative, and Labour Parties. Mr. Asquith and other antisuffragists clung to the position of simply replacing on the parliamentary register those men who had forfeited their vote through ceasing to be occupiers. This, however, was but rumour. What we knew as a positive fact was that the makeshift proposals brought by the Government before Parliament were rejected one after another. August 13th and 14th, 1916, were days of first-rate importance in the history of our movement. On the 13th the Observer, the well-known Conservative Sunday paper, up to that time a determined opponent of women's enfranchisement, contained an editorial completely and thoroughly withdrawing its opposition. Among other excellent things the editor, Mr. Garvin, wrote: "Time was when I thought that men alone maintained the State. Now I know that men alone never could have maintained it, and that henceforth the modern State must be dependent on men and women alike for the progressive strength and vitality of its whole organization."
On the 14th Mr. Asquith, introducing yet another Special Register Bill, announced in the House of Commons a similar change of view. After acknowledging in a very handsome way the great national value of the services rendered by women to their country during the war, saying that these had been as effective as those of any other part of the population, he added: