service should not have a vote. In a country like England the objection is supremely foolish: it reminds one of Plato’s ironical argument, in this connection, that men who are bald should not be allowed to make shoes. As to the comparative disturbance of judgment which a certain proportion of women suffer at certain periods, it is preposterous to suppose that this does not unfit them for more important work, but does unfit them for casting a vote once in seven years. Is it suggested that the Conservative matron will, if an election fall in her period of nervous instability, march in a frenzy to the poll and vote for Keir Hardie? Even the more or less intoxicated male voter does not overrule a settled conviction so easily. But it is waste of time to discuss such matters. A simple investigation of years of experience in America and Australasia is more valuable than the pedantic declarations of one or two scientific men. Even Conservative Australians smiled when I asked them if the consequences of female enfranchisement, as they are darkly foreboded by serious people in England, had been observed in their Commonwealth.
The anti-suffrage campaign has been the deathblow of the prejudice against the enfranchisement of women. It has shown the complete futility of the Conservative position. Women would probably have the vote in England to-day if a section of those who demand it had not taken a false path. The end, however sacred, does not justify criminal
