On the following February 4th, Mr. Winston Churchill spoke in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, and he bargained beforehand with the Suffragettes that they should not interrupt him during his speech, on condition that he would answer a question on Women's Suffrage before he left the platform. At the close of the meeting he accordingly did so by saying definitely that he would not vote for a Bill to enfranchise women on the same terms as men. He added that he greatly regretted that "earnest, good-hearted women should pursue courses which brought them suffering and humiliation," but "God forbid" that he should "mock" them by concealing his opinion. My sister Adela then rose to ask if he had intended to speak for himself alone, or on behalf of the Government, an exceedingly important point. What followed is best described in the words of an eye witness who wrote at once to Christabel at Clement's Inn: "Last night's affair was terrible. It was a wonder someone was not killed. Your sister was thrown down and kicked by several men. The attack was really unprovoked; the stewards had made up their minds to do it before the meeting. Your sister has a black eye, Mrs. Chatterton's throat was hurt and Miss Gawthorpe would have been seriously handled but that some men came to her rescue." Many women who had long felt that there was "something wrong" with the position of their sex, but had not realised that the possession of the Parliamentary franchise could do anything to remove the disabilities both of law and custom from which they suffered, were now being awakened by the much-talked-of militant tactics to a knowledge of what the vote could do for them. Moreover, many who for years had been nominal adherents of the Suffrage movement, now began to feel that if some other women cared so passionately for the cause that they were prepared to throw aside all the usual conventions of good manners and to thrust themselves forward to meet ridicule, scandalous abuse, ill usage and imprisonment, it was surely time that they too should make sacrifices. Their hearts smote them that they had not done more for it in the past. But most of them as yet thought only of bolstering up and stirring to new activity the old National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies for they still looked upon the militant women as a rather dreadful body of fanatics who could have no notion either of systematic organisation or the prudent laying-out of money. Therefore, though the W. S. P. U. was already growing largely, the N. U. W. S. S. was as yet benefiting most largely from its activities. But times had changed and even the most old-fashioned of the Suffragists were now ready to copy the first non-militant doings of the Suffragettes and, in order to prove that they really wanted the franchise, they too determined to march in procession through the London streets. Therefore on February 9th, 1907, three days before the opening of Parliament, a crowd of