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THE CASE FOR WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE

all parties would know that there was an actual woman's vote, which might be offended and should be conciliated. We should no longer see candidates selected without consultation with the women of the party, without reference to this woman's vote. Canvassers would be sent round carefully instructed how to appeal to the needs and wishes of women; clever leader-writers would rack their brains over the unaccustomed task of finding reasons why women should support their party; ex-members of the House, who had a bad suffrage record, would either be persuaded to retire into private life or engaged in explaining away awkward votes and speeches, kindly unearthed from Hansard by their opponents. Every politician who knew his business would be "converted" by the accomplished fact; every political and social issue specially interesting to women would be galvanised into new life. In fact, politics would be cleared for ever of the spirit of sex domination and sex exclusiveness.

We can leave such difficulties, not without amusement, to the political wire-pullers of the near future; the constructive democrat has other things to consider. In the great city, says Walt Whitman again, "outside authority enters always after the precedence of inside authority." The institutions of a people are but the external and visible expression of the inner spirit of the nation and the age. The young democracy of this old nation can only build in the likeness of the spirit within it, the spirit of sex domination or of sex equality. It is this that makes many women and some men,