On December 1st, 1919, in London deep darkness covered the land. A dull morning gave place to a mid-day of Stygian gloom, and the members of the House of Commons, as they ate their lunch, looked out on to an inky stream reflecting an inky sky. Had the citizens of London been intellectually as benighted as they were atmospherically, they might have run to bow themselves in frenzy before the images of Gog and Magog, beseeching them, amid the smoke of sacrifice, to turn away their wrath. And had some wily and reactionary priest of these divinities arisen to harangue the people, saying: "Brethren, wherefore do you beat your breasts and offer sacrifices rather than seek out the cause of your offence? The gods indeed are wroth, seeing that ye set at nought the divine laws. Even now at Westminster the unlawful thing is being done: the distinction which they in their wisdom have set between man and woman is being impiously flouted. For this the gods frown, for this the sun’s light is put out, giving promise of greater evils to come"—if he had said such words as these, a crowd of primitive citizens might have rushed from the city to Westminster and prevented, had they been strong enough, the reception of a woman into the assembly of the people. As it was, no such thing happened. The atmospheric gloom was accepted philosophically as evidence of a deep depression, not on the part of the gods, but of the barometer in the Atlantic, a peaceful crowd gathered in Whitehall to witness what the evening papers would describe as “the scenes” at Westminster, and the Members of the House of Commons finished their lunches and asked their questions undisturbed. Even though the attendance in the House was large, to an unprejudiced observer in the gallery what occurred seemed, as I have been told, quite ordinary. It was almost impossible, at the moment when Mr Lloyd George and Mr Balfour—after a false start—walked to the table with Lady Astor in their midst, to focus the mind upon the revolution in thought and feeling which this event, divided by so few years from that distressing siege of St Stephen’s by wild and dishevelled women, really represented. The first lady member took her seat, and it appeared the most natural thing in the world, particularly as she had so cleverly devised her parliamentary costume as to blend completely with the hundreds of dark coats and white collars that surrounded her. Had she arrived in a “confection,” the contrast, the new element, would have been immeasurably accentuated.