in the island of Laputa, there is a most ingenious doctor who directs that every senator in the great council of a nation, after he has delivered his opinion and argued in favour of it, shall be obliged to give his vote directly contrary. Really there is something of this spirit in the present House of Commons as regards Female Suffrage. Perhaps a little analysis will enable us to understand this paradoxical situation. The majority have promised to vote for Women's Suffrage. But whom have they promised? Women. And women have no votes. Therefore the M.P.'s do not take them seriously. You see the vicious circle. In order for women to get votes they must have votes already. And so the men will bemock and befool them from session to session. Who can wonder if, tired of these gay deceivers, they begin to take the law into their own hands? And public opinion—I warn the Government—public opinion is with the women.
It is true that there is still a certain opposition in the country to Female Suffrage, but how faint, how half-hearted, compared with that ancient opposition to woman's higher education or to her wider sphere of work. It is the last sullen struggle to keep her exclusively a domestic animal. But the gibes and sneers are a mere feeble echo from the past. The fact is that woman's battle is practically won. To-day, when woman has done so brilliantly in medicine, in mathematics, in science, when a woman has made the most interesting discovery of our day—radium—the stale old flouts and jeers go off like mouldy Christmas crackers. The battle is won, I say, and it is time the enemy accepted their defeat. The vote will be the legitimate reward of woman's proved capacity in almost every sphere of work.
The legitimate but, mark you, not the logical reward. Our domestic grandmothers had as much right to a vote as our scientific sisters.
To have an opinion upon politics is not incompatible
