MR. ASQUITH BECOMES PRIME MINISTER. DEFEAT OF MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL IN NORTH WEST MANCHESTER AND HIS ELECTION AT DUNDEE; MR. ASQUITH'S OFFER AND THE WOMEN'S REPLY. Owing to Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's continued illness, Mr. Asquith had been acting as his deputy for many months past, and the Easter Holidays were scarcely over when it was announced that he had become Prime Minister in fact, for the state of Sir Henry's health had compelled him to resign. The Ex-Premier did not live long afterwards. Though he had been converted to Women's Suffrage late in life when his fighting powers were always seriously impaired, there is little doubt that he spoke truly when he declared his disappointment at not being able to do anything for the Suffragists when they waited upon him in deputation on the 19th of May, 1906; and, if ever the secret history of the Government during that time comes to be written, we shall probably learn that, had he possessed the strength to enforce his will upon his colleagues, votes would have been granted to women that very year. Once when Annie Kenney and Mary Gawthorpe were travelling with Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence to Bordighera, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and they chanced to enter the same train and afterwards Sir Henry happened to seat himself at the very table where Annie and Mary were taking tea. They at once introduced themselves to him and all three had a long talk together in the course of which Annie naïvely assured him, "You have no one in the Cabinet so clever as Miss Christabel Pankhurst." Other things, too, she must have told him out of her loyal, earnest heart for, as she explained to us later, "he looked _so_ much happier afterwards," and we have been told by some who knew him that, when criticisms of the Suffragettes were subsequently made in his hearing, he would invariably protest, "Oh, you must not say anything against my little friend, Annie Kenney."