His arguments at the time reminded me of an episode in East Africa thirty years ago. A certain independent Chief tolerated the presence on his territory of a plucky band of missionary pioneers. He did not care about Christianity but he liked the trade goods the missionaries brought to purchase food and pay for labour in the erection of a station. These trade goods they kept in a storehouse made of wattle and daub. But this temporary building was not proof against cunning attempts at burglary on the part of the natives. The missionaries at length went to the Chief (who was clothed shamelessly in the stolen calicoes) and sought redress. "All right," said the potentate, who kept a fretful realm in awe, "But you have no proof it is my people who break in and steal. You just catch one in the act, and then you'll see what I'll do."
So the Oxford and Cambridge athletic missionaries sat up night after night under some camouflage and at last their patience was rewarded by the capture of a naked, oily-skinned negro who emerged from a tunnel he had dug under the store-foundations. Then they bore him off to the Yao chieftain.
"Now we know where we are," said the Chief. "You've proved your complaint. We'll have him burnt to death, after lunch, in the market place. I presume you've brought a lunch-basket?"
"Oh no!" said the horrified propagandists: "We don't want such a penalty as that..."
"Very good" said the Chief, "then we'll behead him..." "No! No!"
"Crucify him?"—"No! No!"—"Peg him down over a Driver Ants' nest?" "No! No!"
"Then, if you don't want any rational punishment, he shall go free." And free he went.
In the same way the Chancellor of the Exchequer of those days was so hard to please over Suffrage measures that none brought forward was democratic enough, far-reaching and overwhelming enough to secure his adhesion. He was therefore forced to torpedo the Conciliation Bill, to snatch away the half-loaf that was better than no bread at all. He spoke and voted against these tentative measures of feminine enfranchisement, with tongue in cheek, no doubt, and hand linked in that of Lulu Grandcourt whose opposition to any vote being given to woman and whole attitude towards the sex was so bitter that he had to be reminded by Lord Aloysius Brinsley (who like his brother Robert was a convinced Suffragist) that after all he, Lulu Grandcourt, had deigned to be born of a woman, had even—maybe—been spanked by one.
The Speaker had hinted on the occasion of the second reading of the Concilition Bill and at a later raising of the same question that there might arise all sorts of obstacles to wreck the Woman's Franchise measure in Committee; obstacles that apparently need not be taken into account as dangerous to any measure affecting male interests. Therefore many of the M.P.'s timorously voted for the second reading of the Conciliation Bill in order to stand well with their Constituencies, yet looked to the Premier to trip it up by some adroit use of Parliamentary jiu-jitsu. They were not disappointed in their ideal politician. The Bill after it had passed its second reading by a large majority was referred to a Committee of the whole House, which seemingly is fatal to any measure that seeks to become law.
So the stale summer of 1910 wore itself away in recriminations, hopings against probability that the newer types of Liberal statesmen were honest men, keepers of promises, not merely—as Vivie said in one of the many speeches that got her into trouble—"Bridge-players, first and foremost, golf-players when they couldn't play bridge, or speculators on the Stock Exchange, champagne drinkers; and prone to eat at their Lucullus banquets, public and private, till they sometimes fainted with indigestion."