Threatening, as it does, a drastic sweep of all political, economic and every other difference between the standards, training, and employment of the sexes, it was pressed forward, nevertheless, not only with characteristic masculine failure to recognise the vital significance of the other sex in Human Things, but in utter blindness to social and racial consequences, immediate and remote, which make it possibly the most momentous decision ever arrived at in the history of human progress. Showing how little it was known for the turning-point in our great destiny, the question was debated with unseemly levity, while less than half the parliamentary members troubled (or had hardihood) to record their votes; the abstention of the others proving which way blew the straws of their faint wills. And of those voting in favour, half, perhaps, did so (as some confessed) under intimidation of otherwise losing their seats. (What would be said of the soldier who should turn his back upon the enemy for fear of losing life even?) No more than twenty-five found courage to say their "No's" like honest gentleman. Yet far from Enfranchisement having been a burning need blazing in the hearts of women, their newly-awarded vote required to be spurred and whipped out of all but a small minority. Or coaxed from them by abandoning appeal on all the wider issues of Imperial and national policy, and, in so far as their interest was sought, by reducing the programme to personal and domestic issues--electric lighting in their parlours, hot-water taps in their kitchens, and so forth. And here was seen, at once, the threat of a grave and an increasing diversion from that purely political outlook of men, which should be impersonal in issue, broad in enterprise. Not that the human and domestic side is a whit less momentous than the more abstract and national. But appealing to a different order of mind, it demands that different order of mind which characterises the woman-sex, to deal with it effectively. The plea that women will acquire in time the masculine political view-point threatens, on the other hand, the loss in them of their own highly-specialised and invaluable interests, morale and qualities; which, being womanly of impulse and of trend, make for the individual welfare, happiness and elevation of the nation's members. III As with every other human function, there are two departments of politics. And the House of Commons represents man's.