The inevitable introduction, or accentuation in a sphere where it had hitherto been less marked, of this new element was the one consideration on which a fair-minded man might have seriously pondered before making up his mind on the question of votes for women. No professions or good intentions on women’s part could conjure it away, and it was to be admitted that it would make for evil as well as for good. The mutual influence of the sexes may produce the highest devotion and the loftiest endeavour. Men and women will do for one another, both individually and in the mass, greater and finer things than they will do for their own sex alone: they can appeal to each other’s highest feelings. On the other hand, they can appeal to the lowest feelings, and the flow of the current, either by attraction or repulsion, can easily work in such a way as to cause distraction rather than concentration, irrelevancy rather than logical conclusion. It might well have seemed, on dispassionate reflection, that there was already irrelevancy enough in the political life of England. Appeals to prejudice or mere personalities were common enough without increasing the strength and range of their appeal. With every recognition of the logic of the women’s claim, there remained the fear that the woman’s tendency to take an intensely personal view of questions, her ready affection by emotional side-issues, the sway which personal antipathies and repulsions exercise, almost unconsciously, over her mind, and the quite notorious unscrupulousness with which she will use every possible feminine appeal to gain over a man against his better judgment, might be as unfortunate as the influence of her higher qualities would be valuable. The march of events and of political thought triumphantly overbore objections of this kind: they could not possibly stem the tide of great historic necessity. But this tide has not swept facts away: what was true in such objections remains true still, nor will retorts on the nature of corresponding masculine failings destroy them. Men, let it be admitted, are as frail in their way as women, and then let it be recognised that the influence against which they are most frail has burst into a region where they were comparatively exempt from it. There is no disrespect, I feel sure, in reminding Englishwomen, who are not at all averse from criticising other members of their sex, of these things. Those of them who recognise the dangers will have the opportunity of guarding against them by educating the ignorant. It will be for them, the political leaders of the women, to see that women’s influence is used to clarify, not to obscure, judgment, to deprecate the undue intrusion of personal emotions, and to broaden the range of the woman’s political views beyond her own immediate environment. The power which they hold in their hands is enormous: they have not yet learned to use it fully, but they cannot divest themselves of it. The political future of England depends largely on the manner in which they handle it.
There is now a lady members’ room in the Palace of Westminster, which at present has only one occupant. When it has many—and the time may not be long distant—will it not be a dynamo for the storage of the feminine current? Its very existence cuts for the first time across the purely political differences of members within the precincts of the House, typifying a distinction never before drawn between one member and another—that of sex. Its effects may not be immediate and resounding, but there are dormant possibilities there which it would be absurd to overlook, possibilities of a new energy let loose, of drama, even of romance. The collective consciousness of the House or of a committee is extremely susceptible to emotional appeal: it is easily exasperated, readily smoothed by tact, quickly moved to laughter. It would hardly be impervious to an appeal, even tacit, to its chivalry. If a man with a fine appearance and a good voice immediately prepossesses such an audience in his favour, may we not imagine the case of a beautiful woman with a melodious voice rising, let us say, from the Treasury or the front Opposition bench to plead a cause with passion? A crowded House is an effective background for a speaker from such a position: a woman, with her sex’s unerring eye for effective pose, would make full use of it. Would she not project from her whole personality a force infinitely exceeding that of her mere words and arguments, a force of which no man would be capable, given a similar audience? There might be a radiance, a pathos—suppose she ventured a telling sob—an enthusiasm which, though absent from the pages of the morrow’s Hansard, might tell strongly enough upon the night’s division. At ordinary times, it is true, party prepossessions and party whips, as well as logical convictions, are sufficient safeguards against the effect of irrelevant appeal: but, when the point is critical, opinions evenly divided, feeling high, or a government shaking, the smallest thing may turn the scale. The appeal of a woman to men, used consciously or unconsciously, at such a time would not be a small thing. It might be so momentary as to vanish from the ken of history, but it might be decisive. The requisite combination of circumstances may be long in making its appearance, but no one can deny its possibility. The oratorical power of a Fox, a Pitt and a Burke are remembered even now, when their personalities have vanished and the effect of their very words is no longer overpowering. If their emotional mastery over a gathering of men was so great as to outlive their bodies for over a century, surely the history of future centuries may have to tell of women whose mastery was transcendent, of some female Pitt, who led a Parliament, or some new Joan of Arc, who led a nation. Englishwomen and Englishmen may well ponder all that the future may bring out of that lady members’ room with its now solitary occupant. For good and for ill there is a new force at Westminster which, like all new forces, looks innocent enough at the experimental stage, but may yet contain the energy to revolutionise a world.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See The Education of Henry Adams, p. 442
[2] Even M. Marcel Proust’s remarkable picture of modern “jeunes filles” in his masterpiece of discursion “A l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs” does not convince me that flappers exist in France.