While ladies had actually been elected, and seven of them were calmly taking their seats in the Parliament of Finland—the most advanced corner of the world as regards women’s rights—our English sisters were marching to Hyde Park. They had tried quiet means and loud; addressed meetings, waved flags, and shouted from behind the grill in the House of Commons, had fought policemen in open combat in the streets; and then they bethought themselves of a gigantic open-air muster. Smart ladies in thousand-guinea motors, costers who were forced to leave their carts outside, factory women with babies in their arms, titled dames and girls from the slums, all marched or rode or drove in that great procession. The suffragettes behaved most moderately in Hyde Park. The noisy scenes were all reserved for Westminster, where a Member of Parliament laughingly remarked to me: “I love women, but I don’t like them when they are carried away by their feelings, and then by the policeman.” After a suffragist riot outside the House of Commons, a constable was asked by a Member if they had had many people in the row. “Never saw such a sight here in my life, sir.” “Really?—Were they very unruly?” “Awful, just kicking and scratching, and going on anyhow.” “And you didn’t get hurt?” “No, thank you, sir. You see, I am a married man, so I know how to handle women.” For forty years women worked quietly for their rights and got nothing, and so they are determined to proclaim their wrongs from the housetops until they are heard. In the centre of the Park, one Sunday on the grass, stood a red flag on a waggonette, from which the horse has been unhitched. In the vehicle sat four women; a large crowd surrounded them. It was a suffragette meeting. An elderly woman was speaking, her audience was mainly composed of men of every class and grade,—from the Society man in immaculate silk hat and frock-coat to the tramp with his grubby bundle under his arm. Here and there a woman’s dress relieved the sombre-looking crowd with a bit of colour, and nurses wheeling perambulators, occupied by aristocratic babies, formed a fringed border to the gathering. Shouts of laughter rose every few seconds; even the burly policemen, scattered here and there through the crowd, joined in the merriment with more than a good-humoured chuckle. The old lady was bringing her speech to a close. “And what have you men done with the world, the lot of ye?” she asked. “And what are ye afraid we women shall do with the world when we’ve our vote? “Afraid! that’s what ye are!” Each remark produced a roar of laughter, which rose higher and higher each time. “You don’t want churches,” she continued. “Ruskin said you don’t want churches——” “Who did?” asked one of the crowd. “Why, Ruskin,” she replied. “I read it not long ago.... We don’t want churches either.” “What _do you_ want, then,—public-houses?” asked a facetious interrupter.