Page:Women Wanted.djvu/327

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WOMEN WANTED
297

longer regard the woman suffrage question from the standpoint we occupied before the war. . . . I have said that women should work out their own salvation. They have done it. The woman's cause in England now presents an unanswerable case."

Mr. Lloyd George agreed: "The place of woman," he said, "is altered for good and all. It would be an outrage not to give her the vote. The further parliamentary action now involved may be regarded as a formality."

General French, former commander of the British armies, the brother of Mrs. Despard and of Mrs. Harley who died at the front, crossed the Channel to announce his conversion to the woman's cause through "the heroism, the endurance and the organising ability of the women on the battlefields of France and Belgium."

The press of the country burst into print with a new confession of faith. The Observer declared: "In the past we have opposed the claim on one ground and one ground alone—namely, that woman by the fact of her sex was debarred from bearing a share in national defence. We were wrong." The Daily Mail: "The old argument against giving women the franchise was that they were useless in war. But we have found out that we could not carry on the war without them." The Evening News: "In the home woman has long been a partner—not always in name, perhaps, but generally in practice. Now she is a partner in our national effort. And if she demands a partner's voice in the