ought we to support, or what sort of measure? second, what should be our immediate means—how are we to act at Parliamentary elections or during Parliamentary discussions?
The answer given to the first of these questions by the Adult Suffrage party is attractive from its simplicity, and because it seems to have secured a large measure of support from members of all parties. I am not here concerned with the desirability of universal adult suffrage, but as a matter of tactics I think that the Adult Suffrage party is gravely mistaken. It is playing into the hands of two sets of opponents—those who support adult suffrage merely because it is the most convenient means of opposing any smaller extension of the franchise to women, and those who are really in favour of universal adult suffrage for men only. It must be remembered that Women's Suffrage is not a democratic policy yet, and that the bulk of the men of the working class have still got to be converted to it. It is quite possible that adult suffrage for men may come soon; the latchkey decision seems to have brought us so near to it that a quite ordinarily unscrupulous Government might think it worth while to go the rest of the way. But there is not the smallest chance that adult suffrage for men and women would be worth any Government's while within the next twenty years. The Adult Suffrage policy is wrong because it will not only fail to get what women want, but will help their enemies to give them what they do not want. It will not get the vote for all women, because too many of
