'Are you a Conservative?'
'No, I myself am not a Conservative——'
'You work for the Labour men—I know!'
'It's child's play belonging to any party till we get the vote,' she dismissed it. 'In future we are neither for Liberal nor Conservative nor Labour. We are for Women. When we get the sex bar removed, it will be time for us to sort ourselves into parties. At present we are united against any Government that continues to ignore its duty to the women of the country. In the past we were so confiding that when a candidate said he was in favour of Woman's Suffrage (he was usually a Liberal), we worked like slaves to get that man elected, so that a voice might be raised for women's interests in the next Parliament. Again and again the man we worked for got in. But the voice that was to speak for us—that voice was mute. We had served his purpose in helping him to win his seat, and we found ourselves invariably forgotten or ignored. The Conservatives have never shown the abysmal hypocrisy of the Liberals. We can get on with our open enemies; it's these cowards' ('Boo!' and groans)—'these cowards, I say—who, in order to sneak into a place in the House, pretend to sympathize with this reform—who use us, and then betray us; it's these who are women's enemies!'
'Why are you always worrying the Liberals? Why don't you ask the Conservatives to give you the vote?'
'You don't go to a person for something he hasn't got unless you're a fool. The Liberals are in power; the Liberals were readiest with fair promises; and so we go to the Liberals. And we shall continue to go to them. We shall never leave off' (boos and groans) 'till they leave office. Then we'll begin on the Conservatives.' She ended in a chorus of laughter and cheers, 'I will now call upon Miss Cynthia Chisholm to propose the resolution.'
Wherewith the chairman gave way to the younger of the two girls. This one of the Gracchi—a gentle-seeming creature, carelessly dressed, grave and simple—faced the mob with evident trepidation, a few notes, to which she never referred, in her shaking hand. What brought a girl like that here?—was the question on the few thoughtful faces in the crowd confronting her. She answered the query by introducing the resolution in an earnest little speech which, if it didn't show that much of the failure and suffering that darken the face of the world is due to women's false position, showed, at all events, that this young creature held a burning conviction that the subjection of her sex was the world's Root-Evil. With no apparent apprehension of the colossal audacity of her position, the girl moved gravely that 'this meeting demands of the Government the insertion of an enfranchisement clause in the Plural Voting Bill, and demands that it shall become law during the present session.' Her ignorance of Parliamentary procedure was freely pointed out to her.
'No,' she said, 'it is you who are ignorant—of how pressing the need is. You say it is "out of order." If treating the women of the country fairly is out of order, it is only because men have made a poor sort of order. It is the order that should be changed.'
Of course that dictum received its due amount of hooting.
'The vote is the reward for defending the country,' said a voice.