Against such dangers it seemed to Mr. Lloyd George that all reasonable men should combine and follow the road midway between “the falsehood of extremes.” He was himself sometimes tempted, in some moods, to agree with the enemies who suggested that his work was done. Both for him and M. Clemenceau the achievement of victory seemed to mark the fitting consummation of their careers. But if such moods came, they soon passed. For retirement was impossible. It was not a time when any patriot could stand aside. The storm was coming, and it was necessary to ride it. The thought of retirement never seriously presented itself to his active and combative mind. The first step was to secure a new mandate from the country for the work that lay before him. So he decided on a General Election.[137] He had every excuse for this step in the situation of Parliament at that moment. The old Parliament which saw us through the war had lasted for eight years, although its statutory existence had been limited by itself to five years under the Parliament Act of 1911. Five times the War Parliament prolonged its own life, a process quite justifiable during the stress of that mighty struggle, but approaching almost to a scandal once active fighting had ceased. That Parliament lived longer than any of its forerunners in the past century, and, having been elected long before the war, was notably in many respects out of touch and tune with the war feeling of the country. Many of its members had been called upon to resign by their constituents, and by their attitude during the war had gravely belied the patriotic unity of the country. That was not all. A great measure of suffrage reform, far and away the most extensive since the Reform Act of 1831, had been passed into law in February, 1918. The new register had been completed by October 1st and contained two and a half times as many electors as the register compiled before the war. For the first time women had the vote, and the same right had been extended to soldiers on active service, to sailors, merchantmen, and fishermen on the sea, besides a vast population of new home voters. These were the people who had won the war. It seemed only fair and just that they should have a voice in the peace. It has always been the fixed constitutional rule in this country that when a new Reform Act has created a large class of new voters the old Parliament becomes obsolete. That was the rule pursued in 1831, 1868, and 1885, and there seemed the more and not the less reason why at this crisis the country’s fate it should be pursued in 1918. Nor can we be in any doubt that if Mr. Lloyd George had pursued the alternative policy of prolonging the life of the old Parliament he would have been equally blamed.