Whilst this was happening, the Women's Parliament was still in session, and every now and then someone returned from the battle to describe how events were going. Before the meeting closed our ever thoughtful Treasurer, Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, urged all not on the fighting line to subscribe to the war chest. More than £400 had been raised when the prisoners came back to us on bail at the rising of Parliament. [Illustration: Mrs. Pankhurst carrying a petition from the Third Women's Parliament to the Prime Minister on February 13th, 1908] In the House of Commons itself the Government's hostile attitude towards the Suffragettes was raised as a matter of urgency on the motion for the adjournment, by Sir William Bull, the Unionist member for Hammersmith, who showed genuine concern at the news of Mrs. Pankhurst's arrest. Other members of the same Party followed by jeering at the Government for the marked difference between their treatment of the Suffragist women and the men who had been arrested for cattle driving and similar offences in Ireland. Why was Mr. Ginnell, the Nationalist Member for Westmeath, to receive the privileges of a first class misdemeanant, they asked, whilst Mrs. Pankhurst and her comrades were to be treated as ordinary criminals. Lord Robert Cecil raised a laugh against the President of the Local Government Board, by pointing out that when he, Mr. John Burns, had been in prison for inciting to riot, the Government of the day had intervened to secure preferential treatment for him. In reply to all this Mr. Gladstone refused to take any action, saying that the women could come out of prison whenever they liked.