male persons only," was never, according to my knowledge, made public. What everybody knew was that the Government had blundered badly, that its chief had given promises which by his own action he was powerless to fulfil, and that the proposed Reform Bill promised by him in 1908, 1910, and 1911 was a complete fiasco. The new situation proved to every suffragist that our measure could never be carried through all its parliamentary stages unless it was brought forward by a united Cabinet as a Government measure. The day for such success as could be attained by a private Member's Bill was long passed. A very considerable number of the general public were under the impression that we had been "had"; and there were many among suffragists who thought that a deliberate fraud or trick had been practised upon us. I never shared this view. The blow was much more a blow to the Government than to the suffrage movement. It did not harm our movement in public opinion. On the contrary, public opinion was with us; the prestige and authority of the Government were lowered; and they did nothing to retrieve their position so far as we were concerned. If the Prime Minister had sent for the representatives of the suffrage societies, the Women's Liberal Federation, and other bodies standing for suffrage which had formed the deputation in November, 1911, and had said, "I have given you promises which it is unfortunately out of my power to fulfil; will you suggest any course which would be a reasonable substitute in fulfilment of my pledges?" he would have put the onus of the acceptance or rejection of such an offer upon us; but he did nothing of the sort. We asked him to receive us, but he refused to meet us or to hold any communication with us on the subject. His position, therefore, was that his promises remained unredeemed, and he made no effort to redeem them. It is true that he offered parliamentary time for the discussion of a Second Reading of a private Member's Bill. But it needed not to be a Daniel or a Solomon to see that a private Member's Bill, of which seven had passed Second Reading in the last four years, and four of them in 1908, 1909, 1910, and 1911, was no substitute for a place in a Government Bill, which, if adopted by the House, would be regarded by the Government as an integral part of the measure, and defended in all its stages in both Houses of Parliament. We were furiously indignant. If a man who had owed £1,000 suddenly became bankrupt, and declined any meeting with his creditors, but offered them 1,000 gilded cardboard discs, he could not expect this conduct to assuage their indignation or soften their anger against him, for he would first have robbed them and then treated them as if they were children. One of the papers which usually supported the Government put the case thus: "If A and B arrange a deal, and A is unavoidably prevented from delivering the goods for which B bargained,