Such a consideration may well cause "an arrest of thought" and a serious inquiry into the why and wherefore of this humiliation.
It is only fair to be as frank in discussing ourselves as in discussing our opponents.
If this brief outline of the story has revealed one point more than any other it is this—that the inception of the movement was due to the intellectuals rather than to working women.
Necessarily non-party in their basis, the committees formed in different parts of the country acted as centres for propaganda rather than for organisation of large bodies of women. They sowed the seed which others garnered. The British woman, like the British man, is keenly partisan in politics. Paradoxical although it may appear, it is undoubtedly a fact that the depth of interest in the Party amongst which she has been reared, loyalty to its principles and its leaders, her very eagerness for the solution of problems to which her forbears have given the best years of their lives, while doing much to qualify her for using the vote, have acted as a drag upon her march towards the goal of its attainment
She has been a Primrose dame, a Unionist, or a Liberal woman first and a Suffragist second. The rank and file of Conservative women still come under this category, as well as a small seceding body of Liberal women. But the members of the Women's Liberal Federation, which has ramified into nearly every constituency in the United Kingdom, have evolved and made suffrage
