Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/765

 WOMEN S MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED KINGDOM 749 returned to the Commons, but at last the long struggle of women for free citizenship was ended, having continued a little over fifty years. The huge majorities by which we had won in the House of Commons had afforded our ship deep water enough to float safely over the rocks and reefs of the House of Lords. The Royal Assent was given on Feb. 6, 1918. The first election at which women voted was held on December 14. Our friends in the Speaker's Conference had aimed at pro- ducing a constituency numbering roughly about 10,000,000 men and 6,000,000 women. The actual numbers of both sexes enfran- chised by the Act of 1918 turned out to be considerably in excess of this calculation. A Parliamentary return published in Novem- ber, 1918, showed the following numbers of men and women on the register. Men. 12,913,166 Naval and Military Voters 3,896,763 16,809,929 Women. 8,479,156 Naval and Military Voters 3,37 2 8,482,528 At the annual Council meeting of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies held in March, 1918, its object was changed by formal vote. It was no longer necessary to concen- trate on Women's Suffrage and we adopted as our object "To obtain all such reforms as are necessary to secure a real equality of liberties, status and opportunities between men and women." o change of name was made until the following year when a Mtution was adopted and the name was modified in accordance with our present <>1>ject. We have now become the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship and we hope that the letters N. U. S. E. C. will soon become as familiar and as dear to our members as N. U. W. S. S. were in the old days. At the same meeting 1 retired from the presidency and my friend and colleague, Miss Eleanor Rathbone, was elected in my place.