My name happened to be among the half-dozen elected Peeresses, and a funny crew we were. Miss Christabel Pankhurst was chosen because she was then considered the only good-looking suffragette. Madame Zansig because of her thought-reading propensities. Clara Butt because she could reduce chaos to harmony, and so on. Anyway, the article was commented on tremendously in the Press, and was the subject of much amusement among my friends. It brought me many quibs, telegrams, and telephones of congratulation on my elevation to the Peerage. The following letter is from a notable woman, written about two years later: “EDINBURGH, “_November 26th, 1909_. “MY DEAR MRS. ALEC TWEEDIE, “I am very pleased to hear that you are disposed to take a more active part than heretofore in demonstrating your support of Women’s Suffrage. The London Society, of which Lady Frances Balfour is the President, is non-party in character and is opposed to stone-throwing, whip-lashing, and other methods of violence. The London Society is one of more than a hundred Societies, which together form the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies of which I am President. I have asked Miss Strachey, the Secretary of the London Society, to send you a membership form, and if you approve of our methods and policy, we shall be most grateful if you will join us. I am away here in Scotland for a round of meetings, therefore please excuse a hasty line. “Yours sincerely, “M. G. FAWCETT.” Later I wrote a long article in the _Fortnightly Review_, entitled “Women and Work,” on the strength of which I received the following note from the pioneer of the movement: “_June 1st, 1911._ “MY DEAR MRS. TWEEDIE, “I am quite delighted by your article, and thank you very much for sending it to me. It is a very valuable armoury of facts, which will be of great value to our speakers and workers. “Yours sincerely, “M. G. FAWCETT.” Every youthful person is a revolutionary at heart; anyway, I was, but as years have mounted up, even my radical tendencies have diminished. The real guides of a nation are the thinkers. Democracy must obey leadership, and leadership is the outcome of brains and learning. Here and there a great man rises from the millions; but the larger percentage of great men are to be found in the aristocracy and upper middle classes, not in the lower tenth, or even the lower middle class. I am becoming more conservative with years. It seems so much more easy to pull down than to build, and all this Socialistic cry is towards pulling down, upsetting, upheaving, without the slightest idea how to draw up a programme of reform or produce a single leader of worth. It requires brains to appreciate brains. It requires talent to understand talent. It requires knowledge and experience to value the beautiful, and vast capacity to build, to organise, to make or to govern.