art, some of them with distinction, are young women. Yet these brilliant and cultured women are deemed more unfit for the franchise than a sandwichman in the streets. This is irrational, it is indefensible, and it must end. A drunken illiterate, staggering to the poll, can record his vote against a name which he could not read even if he were sober. He is considered by the law of the land to be fit to give a decision on issues upon which the fate of the Empire may depend. But an able woman who may be keeping together a business, a business which, perhaps, finds employment for that privileged inebriate, is not regarded as fit to choose the best man to represent her in Parliament. There is nothing that exceeds the stupidity of such a position except its arrogance.'
Mr Winston Churchill, speaking in Manchester in 1908, said: 'I will try my best, when occasion offers, to get women the Parliamentary suffrage, because I do think sincerely that the women have always had a logical case, and they have now got behind them a great popular demand among women.' Lord Haldane believes that 'the time will come, and I believe it will come soon, when it will be seen not only that those who are already bearing a distinguished share of the political activity of the nation cannot any longer be shut out, but that their admission
