women ‘asked every kind of ignorant question of Mrs. P., were amazed that she
had been to prison, asked what her husband thought of it & caused some chor-
tles from Lucy & Miss Pethick’. On another occasion, the impressionable
Eleanor observed how no provision had been made for taking the English visi-
tors back after a reception and so they all squeezed into Mrs. Lewis’s car
alongside two other passengers. The jolly group were taken for a long ride in the
parks and then to tea at the Woman’s Club. ‘It has just been one round of plea-
sure every minute’, Eleanor confided to her mother, ‘no time to breathe
between the excitements.’^93 It was a sentiment that Emmeline would have
shared.
When she was asked how soon the women of England would get the vote,
Emmeline, unhesitatingly replied, ‘Next year. ... After five years of civil war we
have got a promise of time. In the next session of Parliament a Woman Suffrage
Bill will be introduced.’^94 But her confidence was soon to be shattered.
Emmeline was in the city of Minneapolis on 7 November when she was cabled
the devastating news that Asquith had announced that a Manhood Suffrage
Bill would be introduced next session which would allow amendment, if the
Commons so desired, for the enfranchisement of women. ‘I ... was so staggered’,
she recollected, ‘that I could scarcely command myself sufficiently to fill my
immediate engagements.’ Her ‘first wild thought’ was to cancel all engagements
and return to England, but knowing how Christabel would react to Asquith’s
statement, she decided to remain in the USA and cabled back home ‘Protest
imperative!’^95 ‘Can they not see the deep insult of a Manhood Suffrage Bill
after all that has happened?’, she wrote to Clement’s Inn.^96 All the WSPU
leaders knew that the policy of seeking a woman suffrage amendment to a bill
that would enfranchise every adult man rather than one that integrated such a
proposal on equal terms was doomed to failure since it could not be carried
without government support; furthermore, the proposal to enfranchise such a
large number of women would destroy the all-party suffragist majority that was
forthcoming for the Second Conciliation Bill, alienating in particular moderate
Liberals and Unionists. Christabel immediately announced that the WSPU
would ‘at once revert to their anti-Government policy’ and began organising a
deputation for 21 November.^97 The women’s movement in England, observed
Emmeline, now entered upon ‘a new and more vigorous stage of militancy’.^98
THE TRUCE RENEWED