It is in their influence on the neutral body that the militants are doing most harm to the cause. They are exasperating the large undecided mass, and driving many of them into more or less hardened opinion on the wrong side. And once a man (or woman) has made up his mind, especially perhaps if he has made it up emotionally, it is much harder to move him. Of course the militants are also reducing some active supporters of the movement to lukewarmness, at least about the advisability of immediate advance, and thus losing the influence of such supporters. But I think the harm they are doing with the hitherto more or less neutral is more serious. However, do not let us talk of the militant policy any more. I, at least, have enough belief in our cause to trust that it can live down that set-back. Feeling on our side is rising, I believe, like a tide, so that a little ditch cut across it will only retard it for a moment. When I first became aware of the movement--in the late sixties or early seventies--it was in the stage of being met by ridicule. People who were not in favour of it did not generally argue--they laughed. This no doubt kept the timid away, but as a matter of fact very few were interested. An old friend here was reminding me the other day of a meeting of the Cambridge Suffrage Society held she believes in the early eighties. I do not think I attended it myself, though I am not sure. It was an open meeting, and a lady from London was to address it. The committee did not venture to take any room larger than the Alderman's parlour at the Guildhall. But that was too large. The committee sat at the table near the speaker, and six or eight other ladies came in and were asked to sit close to the committee at the table, so as to look less scattered--and that was all the audience the visitor had to address. And that, according to my friend's general recollection, and my own too, was the usual type of the early meetings organised by the Cambridge Society. But gradually all this changed--and the degree of change may be measured by comparing with these early meetings those which have taken place at Cambridge in recent years. No one laughs now, or very few. The question is taken seriously even by opponents, and the number of people sufficiently interested to wish to hear about it is very large.