232 



The Review of Reviews, 



officials, and appoints them for life. We shall all 

 miss Sir Charles Ottley, who did yeoman service for 

 the British cause at the last Hague Conference. • I 

 hope that his mantle has descended upon his successor, 

 Captain Hankey, who has served with .Sir Charles, and 

 will be faithful to the tradition of the Office. 



The Home Rule Bill is to be intro- 

 duced this month, providing the 

 strike does not upset everything 

 — Ministers included. The con- 

 troversy as to fiscal autonomy has subsided, ihe mal- 

 contents realising that that way madness lies. The 

 House of Commons will probably pass any Bill which 



The Prospects 



of 



Home Rule. 



"F.C.G." in the Liber.zl MonlMy.] 



Getting to Understand Each Other. 



John Bull : " Vou're not lialf such a l).id chaii as I used to 

 think you were, Pat ! " 



Pat : " Sure, I never vv.as — and the same to yourself! " 



Mr. Asquith introdmes and Mr. Redmond endorses, 

 and the House of Lords will even more certainly throw 

 it out. Next year the self-same Bill, without the 

 alteration of a jot or an iota, must be introduced and 

 passed through all its stages. It is tolerably clear, 

 from the experience of the last two Home Rule Bills of 

 Mr. Gladstone, that if a Cabinet of angels and arch- 

 angels framed a Home Rule Bill, and got it through 

 the House of Commons one season, the discussions of 

 the Recess would reveal flaws in the Bill which would 

 render it unworkable unless amended. Mr. Glad- 

 stone's finance, for instance, was proved to be quite 

 impossible. Therefore, we take it, the odds are heavy 

 that before the Bill is introduced a second time it 



■^he Women 



and 

 the Ministry. 



will have been discovered that some serious amend- 

 ment or other will have to be made in it, if it is to 

 work properly and be acceptable to the Irish people. 

 But if a single amendment is made the Lords can 

 treat it as a new Bill, and it will have to be sent up 

 thrice, and two more years must elapse before it can 

 be passed .over the veto of the L'pper House. Hence 

 the prospects pi Home Rule are by no means rosy. 

 This is no reason for not trying to do the best we can 

 with it. But do not let us delude ourselves bv the 

 notion that all !is over but the shouting. 



" When lovely woman stoops 

 to folly " she sometimes stoops 

 very low indeed. And it must be 

 admitted that some of the women 

 who are zealous for the enfranchisement of their sex 

 stooped very low when they attended the great 

 woman's suffrage meeting in the Albert Hall for the 

 purpose of spitting out foul epithets at Mr. Lloyd 

 George, who was there, to plead their cause as he has 

 defended it in the Cabinet. There is a certain feline 

 ferocity in some womeri ; they snarl and spit and 

 swear at any object of their aversion, just as some 

 cats snarl and spit and swear at the friendliest and 

 least offensive of dogs. But what conceivable benefit 

 could accrue to the woman's cause by calling a Cabinet 

 Minister " traitor," " liar," and Heaven knows what 

 else, when he came to advocate their cause in a great 

 public meeting presided o\er by Mrs. Fawcett, I fail 

 utterly to perceive. Mr. Lloyd George's statement of 

 the case was unanswerable. He was against the 

 Referendum. He did not like the Conciliation Bill, 

 but if he could not amend it he would accept it. He 

 said : — 



Three-fourths of the memheis of the Liberal Party 4U])port 

 women's suffrage. Two-thirds of, the members of the Cabinet 

 will vote for tlie aniendnu-nt wlum it comes on. But one-fourth 

 of the members of the Liberal Party are opposed to the suffr.age. 

 Now come to the Conservative Party : from two-thirds to three- 

 fourths of the members of that party are 0|)posed to the suffrage. 

 No party, therefore, can form a Cabinet to carry woman 

 sulfr.age. 



What then is the use of swearing and caterwauling 

 when you are up against hard facts like that ? What 

 is the use of iasisting that the Cabinet must introduce 

 a Woman's Suffrage Bill, when the Cabinet is hope- 

 lessly divided upon the subject and the Prime Minister 

 is opposed to it ? 



The militant section of the Suf- 

 fragists -some of whom expend 

 their energies in writing letters to 

 Mrs. Asquith threatening to kill 

 her and her children — decided, at Mrs. Pankhiirst's 

 instigation, to manifest their displeasure by smashing 



Window Smashing 



as a 



Protest. 



