personally did not oppose the late Government, can reply: "Because I was not old enough."
Yet after all this is but a superficial answer; for middle-aged women and even white-haired old ladies are now joining in the agitation, and from the beginning there were some older women acting with the ardent younger spirits. We must look deeper. If women do at the present time desire political freedom with such intensity, why did the movement not develop earlier? Why does it arise just at the time when it can embarrass the new Liberal Government? Perhaps the answer to this question can best be given in the Scottish fashion by meeting it with another. We might put to our puzzled Liberal friends the counter-queries: "Why has Liberalism so recently emerged from the slough of despond? Have the conditions, have your principles changed since the years of so-called Tory domination? Why are you, who were a short time ago weak and despairing, now strong and exultant?" In trying to answer this question the Liberals would probably refer to the recent war, and to the increase of Jingo spirit which it brought with it. Yet at the same time many would assert that it was the ebbing of Liberalism that made the war possible at all. A wise man said: "The wind bloweth where it liestth," and it is at all events true that the wind of human aspiration now dies away, now blows with freshening force. I have heard an eminent professor of history declare that nothing so impressed on his mind the conception of a
